Two-Step Process & Seat Allocation for States
Context:
Recent statements by the Prime Minister and Home Minister have outlined a proposal to increase the maximum size of the Lok Sabha from its current limit of 550 seats to 850 seats.
The government has assured that this expansion will be executed in a manner that grants each State a 50% increase in its seat count, thereby maintaining the existing proportion of seats which was originally determined based on the 1971 population.
The Constitutional Two-Step Process:
The distribution of Lok Sabha seats across various States is governed primarily by Articles 81 and 82 of the Constitution.
This allocation is structured as a two-step process detailed within separate sub-clauses of Article 81(2):
Step One:
The allocation of the total number of Lok Sabha seats among the individual States.
Step Two:
The subsequent division of each individual State into distinct territorial constituencies.
The two separate steps are written in the Constitution to balance the principles of federalism (representation of States) and democracy (representation of the individual — the ‘one person, one vote, one value principle’).
Proposed Legislative Changes:
Removing the 2026 Proviso:
The proposed drafts of the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill and the Delimitation Bill aim to begin the reallocation and delimitation process immediately, effectively removing the existing sunset proviso of 2026.
Historically, the two steps of the process were linked to different censuses.
The proposed revision to Article 81 mandates that both steps will now be tied to the population data of the same census.
A constitutional safeguard currently exists to protect the proportional representation of States that successfully stabilised their population growth.
The proposed amendment will remove this safeguard with immediate effect.
The Draft Delimitation Bill Directives:
The Centre's draft Delimitation Bill seeks parliamentary approval to establish the 2011 Census as the basis for both Step One and Step Two.
Clauses 4 and 8:
These clauses explicitly mandate the Commission to readjust seat allocations and determine the specific number of seats for each State and Union Territory strictly based on these "latest census figures".