The Central Government has not issued the census notification, but one, the administrative boundaries will be sealed from January 2025 and before that the tenure of the Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan has been extended till August 2026, indicating this. That there will be a census next year. There will be delimitation of Lok Sabha seats in the next year i.e. 2026 and then on this basis, one-third of the seats will be reserved for women in the elections to be held in 2029. Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin has raised a big question. ‘When we are facing a situation where the number of seats in Parliament is going to be reduced then why should we have small families?’ he said at a social event where 16 newly married couples were to be blessed.
He further urged newly married couples to have more children and give them beautiful Tamil names. Although he did not say anything in detail about the reduction in the number of seats in Parliament, he was referring to the situation after delimitation. Before him, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu had also urged people to produce more children. However, his stated concern was that the population in the southern states was aging and the number of working youth was decreasing. But somewhere they are also worried that if Lok Sabha seats are delimited on the basis of population, then the political status of the southern states will decrease.
Then the big question is what will be the basis for delimitation of Lok Sabha seats? Will the number of seats be increased directly according to population? If this happens, states with large populations like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra will benefit and the states of South India will be at loss. That is why the concern of Chandrababu Naidu and MK Stalin appears to be political, not social or economic. This concern can also turn into regional dominance and then identity politics, which can pose a major threat.
Therefore, the government will have to think rationally about the delimitation formula and must take the consent of all parties and states on it. Keep in mind that the delimitation of Lok Sabha seats will not be like that of Jammu and Kashmir, where the delimitation of assembly seats was done arbitrarily without taking into account the geographical boundaries in such a way that six seats increased in Jammu region and only one seat increased in Kashmir Valley.
Since independence, the number of Lok Sabha and Assembly seats has been decided largely on the basis of population. Meanwhile, there are 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh and 39 in Tamil Nadu. But after independence, states implemented population control measures in different ways. When economically developed states controlled population in a better way, their population growth rate came down much below the national average. In the southern states, the rate of population growth is less than the replacement rate. The replacement rate is 2.1. This means that if two people together produce 2.1 children, the population will not increase, it will become stable. The rate of population growth in the southern states is 1.6 percent, which is much less than the replacement rate, whereas in the northern states, especially Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the growth rate is more than the replacement rate.
Historically, this situation has been such that the population became controlled in the southern states and kept increasing in the states of North India. Although now the pace is slowing down there too, the population of those states is very high. If their Lok Sabha seats increase on this basis, it will be injustice to those states which stopped the growth of their population. He should not be punished for the good work he did.
If the government traditionally bases the population on population and the formula of one seat is fixed on an average population of 20 lakhs, then there will be no change in seats in most of the southern states, whereas in Uttar Pradesh, the number of seats will increase from 80 to 120. Will go. In Bihar it will increase from 40 to 70. Think, how much will this increase the political status of these states? If this happens, there will have to be a big increase in the overall Lok Sabha seats. However, preparations for this have already been done in the new Parliament building. The new Parliament building has seating arrangements for 880 MPs in the lower house i.e. Lok Sabha. Even if the number is not increased that much, the number can still go up to eight hundred. If a decision is taken to increase the number of seats in proportion to the population using this formula, then all the southern states together will gain about 20 seats. But more than 150 seats will increase in the states of North and West India.
If the government decides not to increase the number of Lok Sabha seats, then the population criterion for delimitation will have to be one seat per population of 30 lakhs. If this is done then there will be 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh and 42 seats in Bihar. But in such a situation, there will be at least eight states where not even a single Lok Sabha seat will be created because the population of those states is less than 30 lakh. If zero seats are not to be kept in any state, that is, no matter what the population is, it has to be given at least one Lok Sabha seat, then a formula for one seat will have to be made according to the population of the smallest state. In such a situation, the overall number of seats will increase by six seats i.e. the total number of seats will become 549. But even then 12 seats will increase in Uttar Pradesh. There will be an increase of 10 seats in Bihar also. There will also be a decent increase in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat etc. In contrast, the number of seats in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu etc. will decrease.
Neither of these formulas seems very reasonable. There is no point in maintaining the existing number of seats as the population has increased a lot and it is not possible for a single MP to represent such a large population. But increasing the number of seats directly on the basis of population is also not logical. So, the average of population, geographical area and GDP should be taken as the basis. That is, one state has a large population and gets some benefit from it, while another state should get the benefit of having a larger geographical area, and another state should get the benefit of contributing more to the GDP. At the same time, care should also be taken that injustice is not done to any state. The political and legislative power of any state should not be more than proportionate. The delimitation formula should be decided by taking all the parties together and with their consent. At the same time, it should also be kept in mind that there is no intention behind this to serve any political purpose.