AA Edit | A Pretext for Delimitation With No Wide Consensus

The BJP-led Union government has taken the most decisive step towards the implementation of the women’s reservation law when it announced the plans to introduce three bills in the special session of Parliament starting on Thursday but the contents of the bills taken together will betray an insidious plan to effect a delimitation of the Lok Sabha constituencies through the back door without making an effort to evolve a national consensus, and hence these must be opposed.

Delimitation of the Lok Sabha constituencies is a constitutional requirement and the country will have to adopt a rational approach to it. However, it is also a function of the nation’s policy from time to time. It may be remembered that Parliament had passed a constitutional amendment in 1976 freezing the number of seats reflecting the population figures contained in the 1971 Census for 25 years. Such a measure was necessary as the country had taken a policy decision to control population growth, and it was a promise that the states which effectively implemented that policy will not be punished in the form of a reduced representation in the House.

The governmental guarantee was renewed in 2001 under the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the form of another constitutional amendment which retained the arrangement for another 25 years. The logic was that some states have successfully controlled their population growth, and taking the population as the sole criteria would in effect take a toll on their representation in national politics. A change in the process, if necessary, must be a product of national consensus, it being the job of the Union government to initiate efforts to that end.

The government had dropped sufficient hints in the past that it would not like to upset the present balance in the number of seats states have in the Lok Sabha in a delimitation process which could see the number of seats rise. It was interesting to watch how the NDA government was going to arrive at a logical solution to this vexed position. It is at this point that the government has come out with the bill which mandates conducting a delimitation process based on the 2011 Census, piggybacking on the women’s reservation law.

The new Constitution amendment bill seeks to raise the number of seats in the Lok Sabha to 850. This would be a welcome move as it would reflect the larger population increase in the country in the last 50 years. But it fails to convince a right-thinking person why it should be linked to the women’s reservation law. The implementation of the law, which had received universal acclaim and support, should also be a smooth affair in the normal course. But the government’s too-clever-by-half approach to the link the two is sure to upset the entire calculation.

The southern states which will see their representation in the Lok Sabha come down have already raised a banner of revolt against the government’s move. The INDIA bloc has made it clear that it will oppose the bills in the current form. The government must sit down with all the stake-holders and evolve a consensus before going ahead with the delimitation bill. In the meanwhile, it need not hold the implementation of the women’s reservation law hostage to the delimitation process either.