Carnegie Endowment | Louise Tillin, Milan Vaishnav, Andy Robaina
India's government recently attempted to address the country's significant malapportionment of parliamentary seats through a trio of delimitation bills, which were defeated in a mid-April special session. This legislative setback has intensified the debate over reallocating Lok Sabha seats, a process frozen since 1971 despite a nearly 1 billion population surge. A new delimitation based on population would likely shift political power from slower-growing, richer southern states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala (which would lose 15-21 seats) to faster-growing, poorer northern states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (which would gain 19-26 seats). This shift would benefit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its alliance partners, who are strong in underrepresented northern states, while upsetting the long-standing informal federal equilibrium where southern states contribute disproportionately to economic output. The proposed bills also sought to operationalize the 2023 Women’s Reservation Bill by expanding the Lok Sabha to 850 seats, with new seats reserved for women, but without codifying the prime minister's guarantee to preserve existing state-wise proportional seat shares. The unresolved debate underscores a fundamental contest over India's federal balance and political representation.
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