What is the Delimitation Commission in India?

11 Sep 2020

Article also published in Medium.

Before jumping right into the article don’t you think it’s necessary to understand the meaning of the title! So what exactly does delimitation mean? It means to fix a limit for something.

India a vast country with a population of more than 130 crores (as of the year 2020) unevenly spread among 28 states and 8 union territories. If you have a look at the population density per sq. km of different states in India you would notice that it’s not even. India is the world’s largest democracy. With the word ‘democracy’ used, the immediate word that may cross one’s mind would perhaps be ‘elections’.

We are going to focus on the election system briefly and gradually ascend to the role of the Delimitation Commission.

Lok Sabha is the lower house of the Indian Parliament. The Lok Sabha elections happen every once in five years. Every state in India has a fixed number of constituencies. Common people of the country vote for their representatives from these constituencies who in turn become an MP(Member of Parliament) in the Lok Sabha. There are 543+2 seats in Lok Sabha. The two seats are for the Anglo-Indian community, meaning those having mixed British & Indian ancestry. The party which is in majority in Lok Sabha (i.e which is holding more than 50 percent of seats or 272 seats in Lok Sabha) forms the central government and the Prime Minister is chosen among the elected MP’s in Lok Sabha.

You can get info on the number of constituencies in each state in India from here.

Now, in a layman’s way don’t you think that there must be a commission that keeps a check on the balance between the population density of the state and the number of constituencies allotted to it?; The concern arises with the allotment of the number of constituencies in each state in India. The state with high population density would be allotted more constituencies & the ones with low density would be allotted less. From the recent stats of the 2019 general elections: Uttar Pradesh was allotted the most number of constituencies.

To tackle this situation the Delimitation Commission was set up under the Delimitation Commission Act. This Act was first enacted in the year** **1952. Hence you can notice how the Delimitation Commission is fixing a limit for the number of constituencies in a state.

Remember ‘population’ is a major parameter but not the only parameter that is taken into consideration by the Commission.

Now the question arises; When does the Parliament enact the Delimitation Act?

It’s simple, we know that population consideration is a major parameter so just think when do we get the official figures of the population in our country? After every Census, right?

So the Parliament enacts a Delimitation Act after every Census. This is stated under Article 82 of the Indian Constitution.

As of 2020, the Delimitation Commissions have been set up four times -1952, 1963, 1973, and 2002 under the Acts of 1952, 1962, 1972, and 2002.

Note that there was no delimitation after the 1981 and 1991 Censuses.

The Delimitation Commission is appointed by the President of India and it works in collaboration with the Election Commission of India.

And lastly, the Commission comprises of :

Related Posts