Inside the delimitation battle: What Centre wants and why Opposition is resisting

The Centre has renewed its push for the contentious Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill and the Delimitation Bill, reaching out to the Congress to seek its cooperation in Parliament. The outreach, however, was firmly rejected by the Opposition, even as speculation grows that the government could extend the Monsoon Session to press ahead with the two legislations.

Although neither Bill is part of the government's listed legislative business for the session ending August 13, both have become central to the BJP's political agenda. The proposed constitutional amendment seeks to expand the strength of the Lok Sabha from 543 to 850 members and implement the long-pending one-third reservation for women after a fresh delimitation exercise.

Also read | What’s behind Centre’s perplexing outreach to Rahul on Delimitation Bill?

The renewed push has once again brought the politically sensitive issue of delimitation into focus, with the BJP-led Centre and the Opposition deeply divided over its timing, scope and likely consequences. Here’s what each side wants from the proposed exercise.

Women’s quota row

The sharpest disagreement between the Centre and the Opposition is over whether the implementation of women’s reservation should remain linked to the delimitation exercise.

The Centre wants to amend the women’s reservation law passed in September 2023 to enable the rollout of the 33 per cent quota in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies ahead of the 2029 general elections.

The proposed amendment would delink the implementation of the quota from the current requirement of conducting a fresh census and carrying out a delimitation exercise based on the updated population data. Instead, the government wants delimitation to be undertaken using the 2011 Census figures while increasing the strength of the Lok Sabha from 543 to around 850 seats.

The Centre says the move is aimed at ensuring that the women’s reservation comes into effect for the 2029 Lok Sabha polls, instead of being pushed back to 2034 because of the time needed to complete a new Census and delimitation.

The Opposition, which had demanded a clear timeline for implementing the women’s reservation law after its passage in 2023, opposes the Centre’s move to link it with delimitation. It questions the need to increase the Lok Sabha’s strength to roll out the quota and argues that the reservation can be implemented within the existing House strength of 543 MPs.

During parliamentary debates and subsequent nationwide press briefings, Congress termed the move a backdoor attempt to alter India’s electoral map. Rahul Gandhi alleged in Parliament that the government was “using and hiding behind India’s women” to execute political delimitation and expand Lok Sabha seats.

The Opposition says it is fully committed to implementing women’s reservation but opposes what it calls the Centre’s arbitrary delimitation formula. It has demanded a transparent and equitable formula, one that is not based solely on population and ensures fair representation for all states.

North-South fault line

The proposed expansion of the Lok Sabha has reignited concerns over the balance of political representation between the northern and southern states. While the Centre says no state will lose its share of representation, several southern states fear the exercise could ultimately shift political influence towards the North.

The Centre has rejected concerns that the proposed delimitation exercise would disadvantage the southern states, arguing that their representation in the Lok Sabha would remain broadly unchanged despite the expansion of the House.

According to the government, the combined strength of the southern states in the Lok Sabha will rise from 129 to 195 seats, while their share of the House will stay at around 24 per cent.

It cites Karnataka as an example. The state’s representation would increase from 28 to 42 MPs, with its share of the House remaining virtually unchanged at about 5.15 per cent. Tamil Nadu’s representation, meanwhile, would rise from 39 to around 59 seats, taking its share from 7.18 per cent to about 7.23 per cent. The government argues that the proposal does not reduce the representation of any southern state but instead increases their seat count while broadly preserving their share in the Lok Sabha.

The Congress alleges that the Centre’s proposed delimitation, linked to the implementation of the women's reservation law, is a calculated attempt to deepen the North-South divide.

Also read | Opposition pushback forces Centre to rethink Lok Sabha expansion, delimitation Bills

The party argues that delimitation cannot be reduced to a mere numbers exercise. States such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, it says, should not be penalised for achieving better population control and stronger human development indicators.

“There are many southern states whose Human Development Index (HDI) parameters are better than those of other states. They controlled population growth and managed their resources well, so why should delimitation be used to disadvantage them?” the Congress has asked.

The party also contends that the Centre’s proposed formula “will neither benefit the southern states nor the smaller states in the North and Northeast. Except for a few large states, all others will be pushed to the margins.”

Gerrymandering concerns

The delimitation process itself has emerged as another major flashpoint, with the Opposition questioning whether constituency boundaries can be redrawn impartially. It fears the exercise could be used to redraw constituencies in a manner that politically benefits the BJP.

To back its argument, the Opposition points to two recent delimitation exercises, in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir, which it claims bore the imprint of the BJP’s political interests.

In Assam, the Opposition alleges that the number of Muslim-majority Assembly constituencies was reduced from 33 to 22, while several Congress strongholds were redrawn by carving out large sections of their traditional vote base. It also claims that a number of minority-dominated constituencies were either converted into Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe reserved seats or had minority-populated areas redistributed among neighbouring constituencies, altering their electoral profile in the BJP’s favour.

The Opposition makes a similar allegation about Jammu and Kashmir, arguing that the delimitation exercise increased the number of seats in the Hindu-majority Jammu region. It says these examples have deepened its fears about a nationwide delimitation exercise. Given what it describes as the Election Commission’s growing lack of independence, particularly under the current Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, the Opposition questions whether a fresh delimitation exercise can be conducted impartially. According to the Opposition, the way constituencies are redrawn could further tilt an already uneven electoral playing field in favour of the BJP.

Battle over census

Another major point of contention is the Centre's proposal to carry out the delimitation exercise using the 2011 census instead of conducting a fresh Census beforehand.

The Congress has made it clear that it will not accept either delimitation or the implementation of women’s reservation based on the 2011 Census, arguing that the data does not include an updated caste enumeration. Rahul Gandhi has alleged that relying on the 2011 figures without a fresh caste census amounts to "hissa chori" (depriving backward communities of their fair share of representation).

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has also criticised the move, arguing that replacing the constitutional requirement of a post-2026 census with the 2011 census is an arbitrary step driven by political expediency rather than federal principles.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) have echoed similar concerns, saying delimitation should be carried out only after a fresh census that includes caste enumeration. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the DMK have also questioned the legitimacy of expanding the Lok Sabha from 543 to 850 seats using 15-year-old population data, calling for the exercise to be deferred until a fresh census is completed.

Also read | Why delimitation Bills appear more ominous than originally thought

CPI(M) MP John Brittas has argued that using the 2011 census would upset the federal balance by disproportionately benefiting northern states in terms of parliamentary representation.

Widening trust deficit

The debate has also exposed a widening trust deficit between the Centre and the Opposition, with Opposition parties insisting that any safeguards be written into the law rather than conveyed through oral assurances.

The Congress dismissed Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s oral assurance, given during the last session, that every state’s Lok Sabha representation would increase by a proportionate 50 per cent, calling it an “optical illusion”. It argues that the assurance found no place in the Bills circulated by the government and cannot substitute for a statutory guarantee.

The party contends that the proposed amendments left Article 81(2)(a) of the Constitution untouched. Since this provision requires the ratio between a state’s population and its Lok Sabha seats to be broadly uniform, the Congress argues that removing the constitutional freeze on seat allocation would inevitably lead to a redistribution of seats in favour of more populous states, regardless of the Centre’s verbal assurances.