Context: Home Minister Amit Shah asserted that delimitation will not lose any Parliamentary seat to the Southern states. The statement came after Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin Tuesday announced an all-party meeting to discuss the issue of delimitation.

Background: –

• In Independent India’s history, delimitation has taken place four times – 1952, 1963, 1973, and 2002.

Key points

• The Election Commission defines delimitation as the process of drawing constituency boundaries for elected bodies based on the population in the most recent Census. 
• Article 82 of the Constitution states that after every Census is completed, the allocation of Lok Sabha seats to each state must be adjusted based on population changes.
• Article 81 states there can be no more than 550 members in the Lok Sabha – 530 from states and 20 from Union Territories. It also says that “the ratio between (the number of seats) and the population of the state is, so far as practicable, the same for all states”. So, each constituency across the country should ideally have the same population.
• The Constitution has provided for an independent Delimitation Commission to reapportion seats among states. The Commission is appointed by the President of India and comprises a retired judge of the Supreme Court or a high court, the Chief Election Commissioner, and the State Election Commissioner.
• The Commission examines the changes in the population to redraw the constituencies or redraw a new one where it is necessary. The draft report is published in the Gazette which is open for feedback. The final report is published after accounting for the public feedback. 
• Once published, the Commission’s orders are final and, as per the Delimitation Commission Act 1952 and Article 329A of the Constitution, has the “full force of law and shall not be called into question in any court”.
• The required amendment in the Constitution for the implementation of delimitation process includes changes to Article 81 (which defines the composition of the Lok Sabha), Article 170 (composition of Legislative Assemblies), Article 82, Article 55 (deals with the presidential election process for which value of each vote in the electoral college is decided on the population basis), Articles 330 and 332 (covering reservation of seats for the Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies, respectively).

Changes in the composition of Lok Sabha as a result of delimitation

• Delimitation has taken place four times – 1952, 1963, 1973 and 2002, with the number of seats fixed and readjusted during the first three exercises.
• The number of seats in the Lok Sabha based on the 1951, 1961 and 1971 Census was fixed at 494, 522 and 543, when the population was 36.1, 43.9 and 54.8 crore respectively. This broadly translated to an average population of 7.3, 8.4 and 10.1 lakh per seat respectively.
• In 1976, the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution froze the number of Lok Sabha seats and put off delimitation for 25 years until the 2001 Census under Article 82. 
• The Indira Gandhi-led government said it did not want to punish states with effective population control measures, as their representation in the Lok Sabha would fall compared to states with high populations.
• In 2002, another amendment was made under the Vajpayee-led government. This 84th Amendment further delayed delimitation for another 25 years. Though constituency boundaries were redrawn to account for changes in population according to the 2001 Census, the total number of Lok Sabha seats and the number of seats allotted to each state remained unchanged.

Source: Indian Express