Context: The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023 to provide 33% reservation to women in Lok Sabha and state Legislative Assemblies. This sheds the spotlight on anothercrucial aspect of representative democracy: the delimitation of electoral constituencies.

What does the Bill say about women’s reservation? 

• Article 334A of the Women’s Reservation Bill says “provisions of the Constitution relating to the reservation of seats for women in the House of the People, the Legislative Assembly of a State and the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi shall come into effect after an exercise of delimitation is undertaken for this purpose after the relevant figures for the first census taken after commencement of the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Amendment) Act, 2023 have been published”

What is Delimitation?

• Delimitation literally means the act or process of fixing limits or boundaries of territorial constituencies in a country or a province having a legislative body. 

• The job of delimitation is assigned to a high power body. Such a body is known as Delimitation Commission or a Boundary Commission. 

• In India, such Delimitation Commissions have been constituted 4 times – in 1952 under the Delimitation Commission Act, 1952, in 1963 under Delimitation Commission Act, 1962, in 1973 under Delimitation Act, 1972 and in 2002 under Delimitation Act, 2002.

• The Delimitation Commission in India is a high power body whose orders have the force of law and cannot be called in question before any court. 

• These orders come into force on a date to be specified by the President of India on this behalf. 

• The copies of its orders are laid before the House of the People and the State Legislative Assembly concerned, but no modifications are permissible therein by them.

Women’s Reservation Bill & Delimitation

• The effectiveness of the Women’s Reservation Bill is dependent on two processes – the delimitation exercise and the Census.

• The delimitation exercise would be carried out on the basis of the Census. The Bill comes into effect when both these processes are carried out.

• Now that the Lok Sabha election 2024 is only months away, the Women’s Reservation Bill can potentially only be enacted before the 2029 general elections, depending on the completion of a delimitation process aligned with the Census report.

• The 42nd Amendment froze the delimitation exercise until the results of the first Census after 2000 was published. In 2001, this was further extended for 25 years. And now, delimitation would happen after the results of the first Census after 2026 is published.

• In normal course, this would have meant that delimitation would happen only after the 2031 Census results were published. But now that the 2021 Census has been delayed, ostensibly because of the Covid-19 pandemic, this timeline could be altered.

• As things stand, the earliest that the Census 2021 exercise can now be expected to happen is 2025 – the houselisting exercise in 2024, followed by the actual Census in 2025. Thereafter, the publication of the Census numbers could take one or two years.

• If the results of the 2021 Census are published after 2026, this could become the basis of delimitation of constituencies.

Delimitation as of now

• Article 81 of the Constitution says that each State gets seats in the Lok Sabha in proportion to its population. 

• The freeze on delimitation affected in 1976 was to allay the concerns of States which took a lead in population control and which were faced with the prospect of reduction of their number of seats in the Lok Sabha. 

• The practical consequences, however, of the 1976 freeze is that the allocation done on the basis of the 1971 Census continues to hold good for the present population figures. India’s population has, of course, increased significantly since then. 

• Using figures from 1971 to represent today’s population runs contrary to the grain of the Constitution besides obviously distorting what representative democracy stands for.

• The exercise of delimitation also implicates the constitutional values of federalism and representation of States as consolidated units. 

• In the preceding decades, the population of the north has increased at a faster pace as compared with the south. 

• In practical terms, this means that MPs in States in north India represent more voters than MPs in the south. Given this context, the question of delimitation necessarily has serious implications for both the individual voter as well as the States. 

• The southern States run the risk of losing some of their seats in Parliament once the delimitation exercise is completed based on current population figures.

How are the seats that are reserved for SCs and STs decided currently?

• The Delimitation Act, 2002 lays down broad principles for reserving seats. 

• The Delimitation Commission appointed under the Act is responsible for deciding the number of Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies to be reserved based on the population.

• “Constituencies in which seats are reserved for the Scheduled Castes shall be distributed in different parts of the State and located, as far as practicable, in those areas where the proportion of their population to the total is comparatively large,” Section 9 (1)(c) of the Act says.

Road Ahead

• Delimitation process will face concerns around how altering the boundaries of certain districts and renaming certain constituencies can have a potentially acute impact on the representation of specific communities. Hence it is time to start a robust conversation around delimitation sooner than later, so that lifting of the freeze on allocation of Lok Sabha seats does not have to be pushed ahead further.