Delimitation must be politically, not just arithmetically, equitable: Sonia Gandhi to Centre

Any delimitation of electoral constituencies that involves increasing the strength of the Lok Sabha must be politically, and not just arithmetically, equitable, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said on Monday.

In an article published in The Hindu, Gandhi said that delimitation – the process of redrawing the boundaries of electoral constituencies – must not put smaller states and states that have been pioneers in family planning at an absolute or relative disadvantage.

The article came three days before the start of a special sitting of Parliament, during which a draft amendment bill to increase the number of Lok Sabha seats to 816 from 543, and reserve 273 seats, or about one-third, for women, will be discussed.

If delimitation is carried out in this manner, the proportion of seats each state has in the House would remain unchanged.

However, Gandhi argued that a proportionate increase could also lead to the loss of relative influence because the difference in absolute numbers would get magnified.

The Congress leader said in the article in The Hindu that any delimitation must be preceded by a Census, as was the case in the past.

She noted that caste enumeration is expected to be a part of the upcoming Census and added that similar caste surveys in Bihar and Telangana were completed within six months.

“It is clear, therefore, that the propaganda that a caste census will delay the publication of the Census 2027 is just not true,” Gandhi said. “In fact, the prime minister’s real intention now is to further delay and derail the caste census.”

The Congress leader also questioned why it took Prime Minister Narendra Modi “30 months to make his U-turn” on the timeline for the implementation of women’s reservation.

She referred to the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam passed in 2023, which provides for 33% reservation for women in Parliament and state Assemblies.

The implementation of the law was initially linked to delimitation based on the 2027 Census. As this process might not have been completed before the 2029 Lok Sabha election, the women’s quota could have been implemented only by 2034.

However, the draft amendment bill, if passed by Parliament in the upcoming special session, will make women’s reservation applicable from 2029 itself.

Gandhi in her article in The Hindu said that when the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam was passed, the leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge had demanded that it be implemented from 2024 itself.

“For reasons best known to itself, the government did not agree,” the Congress leader said, alleging that the government has now changed its stand on the timeline because of the upcoming Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala and Puducherry.

Gandhi said that there was no justification, except for “narrative management during troubled times”, for the Centre’s “tearing hurry to bulldoze extremely far-reaching changes to our polity”. She said that the process that the government was following is deeply flawed and anti-democratic.

“Reservation for women is not the issue here,” she contended in the article. “That has already been settled. The real issue is delimitation which, based on the information unofficially available, is extremely dangerous and an assault on the Constitution itself.”

Centre using women’s quota as ‘weapon’: MK Stalin

Two days before Gandhi’s article, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin also accused the Union government of using women’s reservation as a “weapon” against the opposition ahead of the delimitation exercise, PTI reported.

Stalin said in an interview with the news agency that women’s reservation should be implemented immediately “without showing delimitation as a reason”.

“The Union government is not concerned about implementing reservations for women,” the chief minister alleged. “If their concerns were genuine, they could have done it right away. Rather than doing that, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre is thinking of using it as a weapon to tackle opposition and take up the delimitation exercise based on population.”

Also read:

• Entry vs authority: Two bottlenecks will shape reality of women’s reservations
• In tables: Delimitation could also cut SC, ST and Muslim representation