Yogendra Yadav: ‘The North and South should make a deal on population vs revenue over delimitation'

Indian Express

25-04-2025

Yogendra Yadav, member, Swaraj India, and national convenor of Bharat Jodo Abhiyaan, discusses the challenges of delimitation, freeing up the process from bias and streamlining voters' lists. The session was moderated by Amitabh Sinha, Science and Climate Editor
On the impact of delimitation
Delimitation, as it is called in India, or redistricting as it is called in the US, is a standard procedure or requirement for any electoral democracy to readjust the number of seats to reflect the changes in population. These changes in numbers and patterns mean the system has to ensure that the equality in representation is maintained. It has to address the need to change the
nature of seats, the number of seats or their boundaries and so on. That's broadly what is called delimitation.
In the Indian context, it has three different components. The first is reallocation. Since population changes, some states have more population than others. Within a state, some areas, typically urban areas, have more population than earlier. Therefore, they should get more seats.
The second component is the redrawing of boundaries. You have decided Haryana should have 10 constituencies. What exactly should be their boundaries? If you have decided that Gurugram should have four Assembly constituencies, should it continue to be in one city or be split? There is a special third component, which is deciding upon reservations. Let's say among the 10 parliamentary seats of Haryana, which ones should be reserved for Scheduled Castes? In Jharkhand, how many seats should be reserved for Scheduled Tribes, and which seats should be reserved?
Our constitutional provision (regarding delimitation) was fairly straightforward and followed a fundamental democratic principle of parity. The Constitution says, as far as possible, every Lok Sabha constituency should have the same population. The basic principle is one person, one vote. That's the parity principle.
The Constitution says that after every census, which was assumed to be every 10 years, you could look at the population, re-allocate the number of seats for each state, re-allocate within the state, redraw boundaries and re-fix which constituency should be reserved. That is the constitutional position of the original constitutional state.
On the history of delimitation
There was a delimitation between 1952 and 1956 and then after the 1961 and 1971 census. But by then, the growth of the population was very uneven. Some states were beginning to lose systematically, others were beginning to gain systematically. So, in the 42nd Amendment, the constitutional provision was changed which froze delimitation or the allocation of seats for Parliament and Assembly constituencies. It froze reserved seats and even the boundaries. Everything was frozen for 25 years. The argument was that since the country was going through family planning, it wasn't fair to punish states doing well in family planning. So if their population went down, their representation in Lok Sabha must not be allowed to go down.
Cut to 2001 when that was frozen once again. The then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, after intense discussions and negotiations, decided to freeze delimitation for another 25 years. But with a change. It said while seat allocation for different states would remain as it was, it would unfreeze the allocation within a state because that would not change the federal balance. Also, it unfroze state boundaries and they were redrawn. So, for example, Haryana continued to have 10 seats but the boundaries were redrawn and a new constituency called Gurugram was created. It also allowed the number and the exact nature of reservations for constituencies to be changed. So, it was a partial unfreeze.
On dealing with concerns and challenges around delimitation
We have three options. One is to do what was done in 1976, which is to completely freeze all three elements, and continue for another 25 years or forever. At the moment, no one is quite advocating that. The second option is to re-do a partial freeze, which was done in 2001. To allow everything else to take place but not allow the number of seats for each state, or at least in percentage terms, the quota of each state, to change. The third option is to unfreeze fully and to go back to the original constitutional position. That could have drastic effects.
My suggestion is let's permanently freeze this (present ratio of Parliament and Assembly constituencies), and go for option number two, which is partial freeze.
We already have three fault lines in the country. First is a cultural fault line, the linguistic one, broadly Hindi versus non-Hindi. It's a distinction, not a division yet. Second is the economic fault line, which has intensified over the last three decades. I am not saying that the South and West have become rich but compared to them, the rest of the country is starkly poor. The third fault line is an electoral political fault line between areas where BJP dominates, and areas where the BJP's dominance is being challenged. BJP is not absent in the remaining part but it's being challenged.
These three fault lines do not coincide perfectly and we are lucky that they don't perfectly coincide. But if you do reallocation as would indeed be required by the Constitution, then what you are doing is creating a fourth fault line which happens to coincide with the first, second and third fault lines broadly.
That's why we need to make a deal. North Indians should stop demanding more political representation because they have a greater population. South and West Indians should stop demanding a greater share in federal revenue because they have a better GDP. Once you do so, that, to my mind, consolidates the foundations of Indian federalism and the Indian Union.
On less highlighted concerns over delimitation
In our country, the process by which delimitation should be done is not provided for in the Constitution. Every time delimitation takes place, a new law is enacted by Parliament. So far, delimitation has been done in a judicial manner. Usually, there is a delimitation commission. The head is a former judge of the Supreme Court, helped by the Election Commission. At a moment when institutions are under serious stress, my first concern is, will the non-partisan character of the delimitation exercise be maintained in India?
Related is the concern about gerrymandering. In America, the boundaries of constituencies are decided by the outgoing representatives. So, they actually tweak and tailor the boundaries to suit their own interests. You have all kinds of weird shapes to ensure that you get people who are likely to vote for you inside your constituency and shove those who are unlikely to do so to the next constituency. This is called gerrymandering.
India has generally been free of this challenge but unfortunately, in the last two instances, which took place in Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, delimitation was not done under judicial supervision. The manner in which the Election Commission carried out the delimitation in
Assam was straightforward gerrymandering. It is communal gerrymandering intended to suit one party, namely the BJP.
My third concern is that our constituencies are just too large. Can we find a way of increasing the numbers without shifting the federal balance?
Fourth is which constituency should be reserved. It has been done by a certain lottery principle. It has not been so unfair, although you would find many Muslims complaining that wherever we have a population, things are reserved. So far, that has actually not been the case. But we don't have written rules about it. I would like this to be inscribed in the law itself.
And finally, the concern is that in India, we have two election systems. The election system for Lok Sabha is done by the Election Commission of India. But the local bodies' elections — such as that of panchayat and municipality — are done by a separate body. The constituency boundaries are not done by the central Election Commission and most interestingly, the voter list is different from that of the Election Commission. So you could be a voter in one list, and not a voter in the other. The one thing that is desperately needed before we get into one nation, one election, is to have one nation, one voters' list.