Delimitation can’t be done carelessly: India's federal future demands an acceptable balance of power

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The government’s move to link the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (Women’s Reservation Act of 2023) with nationwide delimitation, or redrawing electoral constituency boundaries based on population, has stoked the latent but ever-growing sense of injustice that India’s southern states have long been smarting under.Remember, it was not so long ago that Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh and a member of India’s ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), urged Andhra people to have more children. And Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K.

Stalin suggested that rather than the 16 forms of wealth traditionally invoked while blessing newly-weds, a new invocation should be for 16 children instead. Both were wary of what they saw, presciently, as a shift in the balance of political power to northern states that would likely follow the delimitation of Lok Sabha seats, originally slated for 2031 (post the first Census after 2026).

Their fears were not without reason, it would seem. The Constitution Amendment Bill moved by the government in a three-day special sitting of Parliament last week purportedly seeks to accommodate the 33% reservation for women in Parliament and state legislatures legislated under the 2023 Act.

But by linking it to delimitation—an exercise that southern states fear will reduce their voice at the national level, due to their greater success in curbing population growth—the Union government has needlessly stirred a hornet’s nest.Though the final allocation of seats is to be determined by a yet-to-be-set-up Delimitation Commission, what is at stake is how the increased number of seats (from the present 550 to 850) is to be apportioned among states. Unfortunately, the