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‘Delimitation a sword hanging over southern states’: Stalin seeks PM’s help
The northern states have rebuffed this argument saying that they are short-changed and not represented according to their population weight.
Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin announced his support for the women’s reservation bill on Wednesday but raised concern about the impending delimitation of parliamentary seats, calling it a Damocles Sword and urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi allay the fear among southern states that the exercise will slash their representation in Parliament.
The debate around delimitation -- which includes the redrawing of constituency boundaries and the reapportioning of seats -- has been reignited by the women’s reservation bill, which passed the Lok Saha on Wednesday and said that it will come into effect after delimitation is completed.
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In 2002, the 84th amendment to the Constitution froze the number of parliamentary seats till the end of 2025. Southern states have long feared that any rejig in the number of seats will benefit the more populous states in northern India and hurt south India’s relative weight in Parliament.
“It is unjust that southern states, which have diligently followed the Union government’s policies to control population growth, may face punitive measures during the constituency delimitation,” Stalin said in a statement.
He said that delimitation was a Damocles sword hanging over the head of Tamil Nadu and South India.
“We will have to defeat the political conspiracy of increasing the number of MPs based on population and reducing the political representation of South India. The attempt to render injustice to a politically aware Tamil Nadu should be nipped in the bud….I urge the PM to provide assurance that southern states, particularly Tamil Nadu, will not experience a reduction in representation during the impending delimitation process based on population,” Stalin said.
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Political representation has long been a contentious issue in India’s federal structure. Since the logic of delimitation of parliamentary constituencies is primarily weight of population by state, provinces such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu with slow population growth have argued that they should not be punished for curbing population growth more effectively than states with ballooning populations, such as those in the Gangetic plains. The northern states however have rebuffed this argument saying that they are short-changed and not represented according to their population weight.
But such a delimitation might be explosive. Writing in HT in 2019, political scientists Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hinston calculated that in 2026, Uttar Pradesh’s Lok Sabha delegation could balloon from 80 to 143, while Kerala’s would remain unchanged at 20, and Tamil Nadu’s would grow from 39 to 49.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) backed the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha, but Stalin asked why the Union government connected the proposed law with a delimitation process for which no dates have been announced thus far. “Regrettably, the current bill’s effectiveness is contingent on the completion of the delayed census and subsequent delimitation process in 2026, thereby postponing its realisation until 2029. People are clever enough to see through BJP’s empty rhetoric,” Stalin said.
He said it was “strange” that the national party did not pass this bill earlier. He accused the BJP of not engaging stakeholders and pushing for the bill ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha elections. “...Defeat is haunting the BJP. They are trying to show this 33% reservation bill as their achievement,” he said.
Addressing the Lok Sabha, DMK leader Kanimozhi said: “This Bill was brought shrouded in secrecy... There is no clarity on when they would implement it.”
BJP’s Tamil Nadu state president K Annamalai, however, hit out at Stalin alleging that only two of the 34 ministers in his cabinet are women. “Out of the 173 candidates fielded in the 2021 assembly elections, only 12 women were fielded by the DMK, a drop from 18 in 2016, which he said shows the clear lack of will for increased representation of women.”
“There are parties in the INDI Alliance today which vehemently opposed the increased representation of women in the parliament in the past. This regressive approach is your alliance’s legacy,” Annamalai said.
The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the primary opposition in Tamil Nadu, also supported the bill. AIADMK general secretary Edappadi Palaniswami (EPS) said his party increased women’s reservation in local bodies from 33% to 50% when they were in power. “AIADMK pioneered in providing reservation for women… I welcome the new Bill which is for the whole of India,” EPS posted on X.
