The seating capacity of the newly inaugurated Lok Sabha has been expanded to 888. This seemingly trivial detail has the potential of triggering a political avalanche. It has already revived speculation that the BJP is very keen on reapportioning the number of seats for each state in the next delimitation of parliamentary constituencies. This is not a wild speculation, but a real possibility. This is not an altogether stupid proposal, but seemingly backed by principle. Yet this is the last thing that India needs at this stage.
Let us first understand what the speculation is all about. The Lok Sabha currently has 543 seats (plus two reserved for Anglo-Indians). The maximum number of seats allowed under the Constitution is 552. Article 81 of the Constitution also provides for how these seats would be divided among different states as per their share in the population. The question is: what happens when the share of different states in the country’s population undergoes a change?
The Constitution provides for a revision every 10 years, in proportion to the population in the latest decennial census. This reapportionment was carried out after the census of 1961 and 1971.
However, a constitutional amendment in 1976 stopped the process. It froze the share of each state until after the census of 2001. When the time came, the freeze was further extended until after 2026.
After the last extension, it was widely believed that this freeze was here to stay. But of late, BJP has shown an inclination to consider the proposal for a fresh allocation of seats. This could be carried out in two ways. Either the number of seats for some states could be cut down to make room for extra seats for some others, or the same result could be achieved by expanding the size of the Lok Sabha so that the current number of seats need not be reduced for any state, while those with higher population growth could get extra seats.
If the government wants to follow the second approach and ensure that Kerala retains 20 seats, it would need to expand the size of the Lok Sabha well beyond 850 seats. That is why the seating capacity of the new Lok Sabha building has raised eyebrows and confirmed the suspicion that the BJP is up to something.
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Hindi heartland’s majority
This proposal would have major consequences. If the Lok Sabha seats are reallocated in proportion to each state’s projected population in 2026, all the South Indian states would be losers. The worst sufferer, Kerala, would lose eight seats (from the current 20 to just 12). Other major losers would be Tamil Nadu (eight seats), Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (eight seats combined), West Bengal (four seats), Odisha (three seats), and Karnataka (two seats). Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand would lose one seat each. All the big gains would accrue to North Indian Hindi-speaking states: Uttar Pradesh (11 seats), Bihar (10 seats), Rajasthan (six seats) and Madhya Pradesh (four seats). NCT Delhi, Haryana, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand would also gain one seat each. Maharashtra, Assam and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir would remain unaffected.
That is the nub of the matter. Redistribution of seats as per population proportion would mean that Hindi-speaking states would have a net gain of 33 seats at the expense of non-Hindi speaking states. The “Hindi heartland” that already controls 226 out of 543 seats would now have 259 seats, nearly a majority if you consider the population of Hindi speakers in some of the big cities in the non-Hindi speaking states.
Expanding the size of the lower house would change its appearance but not its substance. If the seats are increased to 848, Kerala can have the consolation of retaining its 20 seats, but then UP would have 143 seats, and the share of Bihar would go up to 79 and Rajasthan to 50. The Hindi heartland would continue to enjoy a near majority. And there’s no prize for guessing who the beneficiary of this new distribution would be. If the Lok Sabha seats share followed the 2011 census, BJP would have secured additional and critical 17 seats, mostly at the expense of regional parties.
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Democratic principle
To be fair, the proposal is not devoid of rationale. Strictly speaking, this is in accordance with the highest democratic principle of one person, one vote, one value. It can be argued that the current allocation of seats is in serious violation of that principle. While in UP nearly a population of three million gets one MP, the corresponding figure is just 1.8 million in Tamil Nadu. So, the political value of a citizen in Tamil Nadu is nearly double that of someone who lives in UP. This is not a desirable state of affairs. That is why our Constitution provided for a decennial review of the state-wise share of seats. Ordinarily, a democrat should support this provision and regular reapportionment.
The most common argument against this redistribution – that it would be unfair to states that succeeded in family planning – is bad reasoning. Trends in birth and death rates are a function of prosperity and literacy and not any family planning policy. Besides, the same argument can be used against weaker sections of society—the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Dalits, Muslims or the poor—who have a higher population growth rate, or extended globally, against poorer countries like India.
Federal principle
Yet this motion must be rejected as it runs against another principle, namely federalism, long accepted as a constituent of the “basic structure” of our Constitution. It so happens that the gainers and losers in this bargain lie on two sides of a fault line that is at once the principle geographic, linguistic, economic and political Faultline of contemporary India.
The gainers are located in North India, and the losers are mainly from the South and the East. Almost all the gainers are Hindi speakers. Nearly all non-Hindi speakers (including Odiya, Bengali and Punjabi speakers) would be on the losing side. This grouping of states overlaps with those that have been the engines of economic growth and already hold a grudge against what they perceive to be a discriminatory tax regime, especially after the GST. Finally, many of the states that would gain seats have Congress vs BJP competition (or state-specific parties that are not regional in ideology), while the losing states favour regional parties. If these four dimensions were cross cutting, that would have helped political management of diversities. Their overlap is not good news. Pressing the claims of a population-based quota of seats in this context would accentuate the already growing impression of a North Indian, Hindi-speaking domination.
This would violate an unwritten federal compact that binds the Indian Union. This involves the non-domination of any one constituent unit of the union. As it is, the numeric preponderance of the Hindi-speaking states threatens federal parity. Accentuating this further and allowing Hindi heartland states to reach a majority mark in the lower house may cross the red line in the eyes of many non-Hindi speakers. Therefore, it is most prudent to apply the brakes now and act as if a North-South (or better, Hindi and non-Hindi) compact was written into the Constitution.
Politics is not about a simple application of a single principle. All serious ethical choices involve adjudicating between competing principles. In this case, the democratic principle must be weighed against the federal principle. And at this juncture in our national history, the federal principle must trump. A refusal or even ambivalence at this juncture could undermine the unity of India, especially when our national unity faces a full-blown communal onslaught. Let us hope that the BJP does not give in to short term electoral temptation to inflict one more wound on the imagined community that is India.
Yogendra Yadav is among the founders of Jai Kisan Andolan and Swaraj India. He tweets @_YogendraYadav. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)