Opposition leaders on Tuesday said that the three bills that the Union government has proposed to increase the number of seats in the Lok Sabha are unconstitutional, asserting that the voice of the southern states in Parliament should not be weakened by this.

At a special session due to begin on Thursday, the Union government will introduce three bills on the delimitation of constituencies, ostensibly to allow early implementation of provisions to reserve seats for women in Parliament and state Assemblies.

The process of fixing the boundaries of electoral constituencies is called delimitation.

The bills will increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 850 from 543. Of these, 815 seats will be from the states and 35 from the Union Territories.

In a statement on social media, Congress MP KC Venugopal said that the bills were “extremely ill-timed” and posed serious questions that the Narendra Modi government must answer.

“Under the garb of bringing forward women’s reservations, the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] is looking to bulldoze a deeply flawed, unconstitutional and anti-federal delimitation exercise,” Venugopal said. “What was the tearing hurry to introduce this with such little notice?”

Noting that two major states are going into elections, the Alappuzha MP said that holding a “special session for this shows the true devious intentions of this fascist regime”.

Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu are set to be held on April 23, while West Bengal will head to the polls in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The votes will be counted on May 4.

Venugopal added that delimitation “fundamentally alters” the political future of a state. “There should be widespread consultation before delimitation is rolled out, and this effort to irreversibly, dangerously damage Indian democracy will not be tolerated,” he said.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that the bills were uploaded on BR Ambedkar’s birth anniversary and that the delimitation provisions were an “insult to his legacy and a reflection of his warning – delivered in the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949 – about the dangers of a government that isn’t guided by constitutional morality”.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that states that prioritised population control would face injustice under the proposed exercise. He added that the voice of the southern states in Parliament should not weaken due to delimitation.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Tuesday warned of a massive agitation in the state if its interests were harmed in the delimitation of Lok Sabha seats proposed by the Union government.

“If anything is done that harms Tamil Nadu or that disproportionately enhances the political power of northern states, we in Tamil Nadu will not remain silent,” the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief said on social media. “Tamil Nadu will rise. Tamil Nadu will register its protest with full force.”

In a video message, Stalin accused the Union government of attempting to unilaterally proceed with the exercise without consulting any political party or any state government.

“This hurried attempt to push through delimitation is a blatant assault on democracy by the BJP government,” the DMK chief said. “More than that, it is a direct assault on the rights of states.”

The chief minister said that southern states had followed population control and family planning measures as advised by the Union government.

“Is this now the punishment for having done what was asked of us with discipline?” Stalin asked.

Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on Tuesday wrote a letter to the prime minister, saying that women’s reservation, delimitation and the increase in the Lok Sabha seats were not inter-connected.

Reddy said that the Congress supports the women’s reservation and demanded that the quota be immediately implemented in the Lok Sabha and the Assemblies.

Delimitation exercises had been carried out in the past without changing the number of seats and “only changed boundaries of constituencies within states”, said the chief minister, adding that such an exercise can be undertaken.

Reddy said that the “real contentious issue” is the proposed increase in the Lok Sabha seats.

If the exercise is conducted on a pro rata basis, without considering economic contribution and socio economic and human development outcomes, it “will lead to a severe and irreversible distortion in federal balance”, he said.

Pro rata means allocating units proportionally based on a specific factor, such as quantity, rather than equally.

Reddy also proposed a hybrid model for seat expansion. Under this approach, if Lok Sabha seats are increased from 543 to 850, half of the additional seats should be allocated based on population. The remaining half should be distributed based on Gross State Domestic Product indicators, he added.

The chief minister also asked Stalin to spearhead a united front of southern states against the proposed exercise, The Hindu reported.


West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Tuesday that the Union Government had introduced the bills on delimitation with the intention of dividing the state and India, The Hindu reported.

Speaking at an election rally at Domjur in Howrah, the Trinamool Congress chief said that the BJP was attempting a delimitation exercise without a full majority at the Centre, adding that they require the support of two parties to stay in power.

Banerjee was referring to the BJP winning 240 Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 general elections, a significant dip from its tally of 303 seats in 2019. A party or alliance requires 272 seats in the 543-member Lower House of Parliament to form a government at the Centre.

With the BJP falling 32 seats short of the majority, it had formed the Union government with the support of its partners in the National Democratic Alliance, including the Telugu Desam Party and the Janata Dal (United).

“They [BJP] are doing it [delimitation exercise] for political mileage at a time when they don’t have a majority,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “They are in power owing to the support of two other parties. Those two parties are supporting them because they fear the ED [Enforcement Directorate] and CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation].”

Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday said that his party will support the delimitation bill only if Odisha’s political rights are protected, ANI reported.

“This is not just an issue of numbers,” he said in a letter to Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi. “The bill hits directly at the spirit of cooperative federalism enshrined in the Constitution.”

“Currently, Odisha has 21 MPs, about 3.9% of the total,” ANI quoted Patnaik as having said. “If the amendment is passed, Odisha's representation will rise to 29, but its proportion will fall to 3.4%. Odisha...faces a potential 15% loss in political representation nationally.”

The former chief minister said that Odisha’s “political voice and influence will be taken away to be redistributed” among other states, quoting reports as saying that the state will be the “fourth biggest loser” in the exercise.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP John Brittas described the bills being introduced in the name of implementing women’s reservation as a “death warrant” for federal India.

In a social media post, the Rajya Sabha member said that the bills would strip southern states, which have successfully implemented population control measures, of their rightful political power.

Brittas noted that the Union government had rejected the Opposition’s demand for detailed discussions and consultations before proceeding with these constitutional amendments.

“In short, these bills reflect a cunning strategy to reduce southern India to a political colony of the north,” he said. “Even assuming the proposed Delimitation Commission ensures a pro-rata increase in seats, it would still deliver a severe blow to federal balance.”

He added: “In politics, absolute numbers matter far more than mere ratios.”

Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Jha said the bills placed before MPs “offer little clarity”, The Indian Express reported.

“Even widely discussed indications from within and around Parliament find no reflection in the text,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “This opacity raises a reasonable apprehension that the government is withholding its full intent, making the urgency around the amendment appear more façade than reform.”

In effect, the proposal opens the door to early delimitation and a substantial expansion of the Lok Sabha, Jha added.

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

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.

Draft legislation on delimitation

Although speculation about the amendment to the law had been rife in political circles for the past two weeks, copies of the draft legislation were shared with MPs for the first time on Tuesday. Parliament will reconvene for three days starting Thursday.

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 its population.

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

The census, which began on April 1, is expected to conclude in 2027.

The bill that will be introduced in Parliament proposes to amend Article 82 of the Constitution to remove the entire proviso. This will pave the way for delimitation to take place based on the latest census held in 2011.

In its statement explaining the bill’s objectives, the government said that while freezing the seats on the basis of population in the 1971 census served an important policy purpose, “the country’s demographic profile has since undergone substantial changes” as reflected in the latest census.

It also cited “significant inter-state and intra-state population shifts, rapid urbanisation and migration, and disproportionate growth in certain regions, resulting in wide disparities in the population and the constituencies”.

The amendments will also operationalise the 33% quota for women in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies under the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act “through delimitation exercise to be undertaken on the basis of the population figures of the latest published census”, the government said.

The latest published census was in 2011.

It said that the next census and the delimitation exercise after that “will take considerable time and thus, delay the effective and dedicated participation of women in our democratic polity”.

Also read: How Modi government aims to use women’s representation to expand Lok Sabha using 2011 census numbers