Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Monday urged newly-married residents of the state to “immediately plan on having children”, reported PTI.

His statement came amid concerns about a population-based nationwide delimitation exercise that could adversely impact the state’s representation in Parliament

“Earlier, I used to ask the newlyweds to take time before expanding their family,” the chief minister said at the wedding ceremony of a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam worker’s son. “Now with the delimitation that the Union government is planning to implement, such advice does not stand.”

Stalin also urged the residents to give their children “Tamil names”.

Delimitation is the process of redrawing the boundaries of Lok Sabha constituencies. Article 82 of the Constitution states that after every census is completed, the allocation of Lok Sabha seats to each state must be adjusted based on changes in their population.

The composition of the current Lok Sabha is based on the 1971 census. According to the 84th Amendment Act of 2001, the constituency boundaries were frozen until the first census after 2026, which would be due in 2031.

However, southern states have expressed concerns that population-based delimitation could give an undue advantage to northern and central states in the Lok Sabha.

On February 25, Stalin announced an all-party meeting on March 5 in Chennai to discuss the impact of the delimitation exercise, which he claimed could cost his state eight Lok Sabha seats.

Stalin had said: “Tamil Nadu is compelled to wage a major battle for its rights. The threat of delimitation is hanging over the southern States like a sword of Damocles.”

A day after his comments, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had stated that southern states would not lose a single Lok Sabha seat on account of the proposed delimitation exercise.

“I want to reassure the public of South India that Modi ji has kept your interest in mind to make sure that not even one seat is reduced pro rata,” Shah said at an event in Coimbatore. “And whatever increase is there, southern states will get a fair share, there is no reason to doubt this.”

Following this, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah claimed that Shah’s assurances were not credible. “It is tainted with malicious intent to create confusion in the southern states,” he alleged.

On Friday, Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy alleged the Bharatiya Janata Party was conspiring to weaken southern states politically and financially.

In February 2024, the Tamil Nadu Assembly passed a resolution against the proposed delimitation.

In a 2019 paper, Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hintson from the American think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, used 2026 population projections to estimate that the Lok Sabha’s membership would need to be expanded to 846 seats.

Of this, Uttar Pradesh, the largest Hindi belt state, would have 143 seats, up from its current 80. Similarly, Bihar’s seats would nearly double to 79 from 40.

Overall, the proportion of Lok Sabha seats in 10 Hindi belt states and Union territories – Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand – would jump to around 48% from about 42% right now.

Correspondingly, several states outside the Hindi belt such as Kerala, West Bengal and all of the North East would see their representation drop. For Kerala, its representation in the Lok Sabha would drop from nearly 3.7% to around 2.4% as the House’s capacity increases, according to Vaishnav and Hintson.

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