As the debate on a fresh delimitation of legislative constituencies heats up, a number of concerns have been aired along with their solutions, including the very sensible proposal to freeze the number of parliamentary seats but increase the number of Assembly seats in States whose population has grown. That is the more democratic formula since Members of the Legislative Assembly are the first port of call for their constituents whereas Members of Parliament represent their constituents on national policy (broadly speaking).
There are, too, other ways to accommodate the well-founded fears of the southern States that an expanded imbalance of power that a fresh delimitation will create. For example, Rajya Sabha seats could be redistributed in equal measure to the northern, central, eastern, western and southern States, which are already grouped into these five geographic zones, in theory each with its own zonal council. Most of these have not met since 2023, with the exception of the Western Zonal Council, which met in February 2025, while the Southern Zonal Council has not met since 2022, though a meet was planned in Chennai in January 2025.
Naysayers will argue that the zonal councils were intended to settle disputes between States while the Inter-State Council could deal with both State-State and Centre-State relations. In practice, however, the councils take up a series of issues, from Aadhaar to good governance. Given their range, perhaps they need to be freed from the mantle of the Home Ministry. Zonal councils could coordinate with the Union executive through the now dormant Inter-State Council (according to its website, it last met in 2016), which requires greater authority as well as permanence.
The case of Jammu and Kashmir
If combined, the two proposals above would deepen both electoral representation and federalism. But there are other potential pitfalls for the delimitation in 2026 that require guarding against. Two State-level delimitations have been recently carried out: the first was in Jammu and Kashmir in 2022, and the second in Assam in 2023. Each emits warning signals for the exercise in 2026.
The Jammu and Kashmir delimitation was widely criticised by all the political parties in this former State, barring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Numerically, its addition of six seats for Jammu and one seat for the valley gave a Jammu elector’s vote the weight of 1.2 as against one for the Valley elector. It created new constituencies which made no administrative or geographic sense. Indeed, its inclusion of Jammu’s Poonch and Rajouri into the valley’s Anantnag Lok Sabha seat created both administrative and geographic difficulties given that the former are part of the Pir Panjal range, and the latter is in the Jhelum valley.
Worse still, the redrawing of Assembly constituencies suggested that the Delimitation Commission used communal criteria for demarcation. All six of the new constituencies, i.e., Jasrota, Ramgarh, Ramnagar, Vaishno Devi, Padder-Nagseni and Doda West, are Hindu majority.
Further, Muslim majority Kishtwar was turned into a Hindu majority constituency by adding areas of the former Inderwal constituency. Vaishno Devi, Padder and Doda West have electorates as small as 50,000 in comparison to Muslim majority constituencies such as Dooru (1.92 lakh) and Surankote (1.77 lakh). Neither of the three is geographically distinct from other parts of its district.
In Assam
The Assam delimitation followed a slightly different pattern with similar outcomes. The number of Assembly seats was frozen, but the Assam cabinet pre-emptively folded four districts back into the districts from which they had originally been separated, reducing the number of districts from 35 to 31. The merger led to a loss of as many as 10 Muslim majority constituencies — South Salmara, Barpeta (two seats), Darrang, Nagaon, Dibrugarh, Sibsagar, Jorhat, Hailakandi and Karimganj — while Hindu and tribal seats increased. As in Jammu and Kashmir, the Assam delimitation also created constituencies of a vastly different population size.
In other words, population bias is not the only danger that opponents of the delimitation exercise in 2026 should fear. As the Jammu and Kashmir and Assam examples suggest, recent delimitation commissions have not hesitated to create small population constituencies alongside large population ones when it has served the communal purpose of further marginalising minorities. Is there any reason to believe that the same tactic will not be deployed during the delimitation in 2026?
Danger of polarisation
Surprisingly, the Opposition has not focused on this danger as yet. It should. All the Opposition-ruled States have large minority populations, mostly Muslim. True, regional identity outstrips communal identity in most — for example, the majority of Bengali or Tamil Hindus, Muslims and Christians voted for their relatively secular regional party, respectively, namely, the Trinamool Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, in previous Assembly and parliamentary elections. But there is no guarantee that this non-communal voting pattern will continue. On the contrary, the communal demarcation of constituencies is likely to polarise voters even in the southern States. It certainly had that impact in Jammu and Assam, where almost all the new constituencies voted for the BJP.
We tend to believe that the Union administration’s policies in border States will not be replicated in the heartland. That used to be true, but is no longer so. The use of draconian legislation against dissent used to be most common in conflict areas, especially on the borders; it has now spread across the country. The maltreatment of minorities has similarly multiplied.
The power imbalance between the large northern States and the rest that will result from a purely population-based delimitation is, undoubtedly, a clear and present danger. But it should not be allowed to overshadow the other clear and present danger — of communal demarcation of electoral constituencies. Each threatens the unity of this country in a different way. The first step divides the more developed States from the less developed States by further reducing the influence of the more developed States in the union. The second step divides the people by religion. Together, step one and step two constitute a formidable attack on the foundations of our pluralist federation. They must be halted.
Radha Kumar is a historian and policy analyst, whose most recent book is ‘The Republic Relearnt: Renewing Indian Democracy, 1947-2024’
Published – March 20, 2025 12:16 am IST
