Another delimitation of the physical boundaries of the electoral constituencies for various legislative assemblies and the national Parliament has been underway for quite some time. Delimitation means the act or process of fixing limits on boundaries of territorial constituencies in a country or a province having a legislative body. The job of delimitation is generally assigned to a high power body. Such a body is known as Delimitation Commission or a Boundary Commission.
The Delimitation Commission in India is a high power body whose orders have the force of law and cannot be called in question before any court. According to Article 82 of the Constitution of India, upon the completion of each census, the allocation of seats in the House of the People to the States and the division of each State into territorial constituencies shall be readjusted by such authority and in such manner as the Parliament may by law determine. The Central Government constitutes a Delimitation Commission which demarcates the boundaries of the Parliamentary Constituencies as per provisions of the Act.
As soon as the delimitation order of the Delimitation Commission is finalized, the existing constituencies will cease to exist and would be replaced by the new constituencies. This would necessitate reworking of the finally published electoral rolls and recasting them in conformity with the new constituencies. The present delimitation of 200 electoral constituencies is based on the 1971 census figures. Notwithstanding the above, the Constitution of India was specifically amended in 1976 so as not to have delimitation of these constituencies till the first census 2000. After 2000, the 84th amendment in 2001 provided that until the relevant figures for the first census taken after the year 2026 have been published, it shall not be necessary to readjust the allocation of seats in the House of the People of the States as readjusted on the basis of 1971 Census and the division of each State into territorial constituencies as may be readjusted on the basis of the 2001 Census.
The Delimitation Commission has concretized its proposals and has redrawn the boundaries of Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies. Work has been completed in 513 of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies and 3,726 Assembly constituencies in 25 states resulting in a net addition often seats for Scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in Parliament and 68 in the Assemblies.
Accordingly, the next Lok Sabha elections are likely to be held in redrawn constituencies once the President notifies the recommendations, an exercise that has already made many politicians unhappy.
Politicians are though not very happy about the exercise as every politician has been contesting and getting elected from the same constituency every five years for the last 30 years. Since the limits of almost all the constituencies have been redrawn, the typical Indian politician is definitely going to be inconvenienced in more ways than one. But the exercise is too important to be left to personal likes or dislikes of individual politicians. One just hopes that the re delimitation of electoral boundaries coupled with the other electoral reforms would further reinforce and consolidate the foundations of our fledgling democracy.