Delimitation Commission of India

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The Delimitation Commission of India ( Indian Delimitation Commission ) is a commission which is appointed by the Indian government and which determines the constituency boundaries for the elections to Lok Sabha (the Indian parliament) and the parliaments of the federal states and possibly also union territories .

Structure and tasks

Delimitation Acts and Delimitation Orders
Commission Delimitation Act Entry into force of the
Delimitation Act 		Entry into force of the Commission's
Delimitation Orders
First DC Delimitation Commission Act, 1952 January 7, 1953 1953-56, 1961
Second DC Delimitation Commission Act, 1962 December 19, 1962 1967
Third DC Delimitation Act, 1972 December 30, 1972 1976
Fourth DC Delimitation Act, 2002 June 3, 2002 February 19, 2008

After India's independence, the Delimitation Commission (DC), including its duties and responsibilities, was established by the Delimitation Commission Act of 1952, which came into force on January 7, 1953. The DC consists of three persons, two of whom must have been former judges in either the Supreme Court of India or the Supreme Court of an Indian state (High Court) . These are appointed by the government. The third person is the respective State Returning Officer ( Chief Election Commissioner ). Members of the parliaments of the states and members of the Lok Sabha from the respective state concerned, who are appointed by the speaker of the respective parliament, serve as associate members of the commission . The exact commissions on the number of associate members were set out in Article 5 of the Delimitation Commission Act .

The task of the DC is to determine the members of the Lok Sabha proportionately entitled to the states and union territories based on their population and to determine the constituency boundaries for them. The constituencies should be formed in such a way that geographically and administratively related areas are combined as far as possible and that all constituencies of a federal state have approximately the same population. The principle must be observed that the constituency boundaries must adhere to the boundaries of the federal states and Union territories, i. H. there should be no constituencies that are in multiple states. Each state or union territory must contain at least one constituency. For the parliamentary seats, the so-called Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) must be taken into account according to their proportion of the population in the respective state. d. H. individual constituencies are expressly reserved for members of these groups. The constituencies that are reserved for SC and ST in a state or union territory are to be chosen so that they are located in areas in which these population groups are proportionally represented as high as possible.

The DC is endowed with extraordinary powers. Your decisions have the force of law after they have been confirmed by the Indian President by signature and cannot be legally challenged. This power was deliberately chosen to guarantee the independence of the commission and to prevent abuse in the sense of gerrymandering .

Number of constituencies

Number of constituencies in elections for Lok Sabha
choice
MPs to be elected † 		Constituencies Single
constituencies 		Multi-person
constituencies
1951-1952 489 401 314 86
1957 494 403 312 91
1962 494 494 494 -
1967 520 520 520 -
1971 518 518 518 -
1977 542 542 542 -
1980 542 542 542 -
1984 542 542 542 -
since 1989 543 543 543 -
† On some election dates, the election had to be
suspended in certain constituencies, e.g. B. due to local unrest that
made an orderly election impossible. This was the case several times
in Assam , Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir and affected
the elections from 1980 to 1991. In these elections the total number
of elected representatives was correspondingly lower. In addition to the
elected MPs, there were two
MPs appointed by the state president who are supposed to represent the Anglo-Indian
minority at each election .

In the history of independent India, there have been four major changes to the constituency boundaries, namely in 1952, 1962 (based on the 1961 census), 1972 (based on the 1971 census) and 2002 (based on the 2001).

When Lok Sabha was first elected in 1951/1952 , there were 401 constituencies, including 314 one-person, 86 two-person and one three-person constituency (in West Bengal). A total of 489 members were elected. With the election in 1957 , the three-person constituency was split up and the number of members to be elected was increased to 494 (in 312 one-person and 91 two-person constituencies). With the election of Lok Sabha in 1962 , the two-person constituencies were also abolished in favor of the one-person constituencies. With the parliamentary election in 1967 , the number of constituencies increased to 520, but was reduced again to 518 in the 1971 election for Lok Sabha . As of the 1977 election , there were 542 constituencies. After the conversion of the previous union territory of Goa, Daman and Diu into the state of Goa and the union territory of Daman and Diu in 1987, another constituency was added from the 1989 election, so that a total of 543 constituencies exist for the Lok Sabha since 1989.

A temporary adjustment of the constituency boundaries was carried out when in 2000 the states of Uttaranchal , Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand were created by separating Uttar Pradesh , Madhya Pradesh and Bihar . Subsequently, the constituencies of the affected states had to be partially reorganized to ensure that the constituency boundaries matched the new state boundaries.

Over- and under-representation of states

Average number of eligible voters
per MP in the Lok Sabha (2014)
No State or
Union Territory 		electoral
legitimate 		Number of
electoral
circles 		Electoral
authorized
per constituency
on average
1 Andhra Pradesh 64.887.809 42 1,544,948
2 Arunachal Pradesh 757.493 2 378,747
3 Assam 18,804,981 14th 1,343,213
4th Bihar 63.723.810 40 1,593,095
5 Chhattisgarh 17,657,867 11 1,605,261
6th Goa 1,059,953 2 529.977
7th Gujarat 40,578,577 26th 1,560,715
8th Haryana 15.995.014 10 1,599,501
9 Himachal Pradesh 4,744,215 4th 1,186,054
10 Jammu and Kashmir 7,123,277 6th 1,187,213
11 Jharkhand 20,336,193 14th 1,452,585
12 Karnataka 46.171.176 28 1,648,971
13 Kerala 24,251,942 20th 1,212,597
14th Madhya Pradesh 48,090,968 29 1,658,309
15th Maharashtra 80.651.094 48 1,680,231
16 Manipur 1,764,794 2 882.397
17th Meghalaya 1,565,820 2 782.910
18th Mizoram 697,867 1 697,867
19th Nagaland 1,177,596 1 1,177,596
20th Odisha 29,152,514 21st 1,388,215
21st Punjab 19,527,114 13 1,502,086
22nd Rajasthan 42,895,854 25th 1,715,834
23 Sikkim 370.066 1 370.066
24 Tamil Nadu 55,042,876 39 1,411,356
25th Tripura 2,385,559 2 1,192,780
26th Uttar Pradesh 138.672.171 80 1,733,402
27 Uttarakhand 7,041,765 5 1,408,353
28 West Bengal 62.740.481 42 1,493,821
A. Andaman
and Nicobar Islands		 268.940 1 268.940
B. Chandigarh 613.939 1 613.939
C. Dadra and
Nagar Haveli		 196,577 1 196,577
D. Daman and Diu 111,817 1 111,817
E. Lakshadweep 49,821 1 49,821
F. Pondicherry 900,874 1 900,874
G Delhi 12,706,375 7th 1,815,196
India as a whole 832.717.189 543 1,533,549
  1. ↑ including Telanganas

According to the Delimitation Act of 1972, the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution, which came into force in 1976 under the government of Indira Gandhi, expressly stated that constituency boundaries should remain unchanged for 25 years until at least 2001. One of the reasons for this was to create an additional incentive to control population growth. States with strong population growth should not be able to benefit from increased political representation and any conflicts between states that may arise from this should be avoided through fixed long-term regulations. The southern Indian states, in particular, which were able to get their population growth under control much better, were concerned by the stronger population growth in the Hindi- speaking northern Indian states and wanted a guarantee of their political weight in the Lok Sabha.

Measured by the number of over- and under-represented states in the election for Lok Sabha 2014 (numbering of states and union territories corresponds to the table on the right): strongly underrepresented moderately underrepresented roughly moderately overrepresented strongly overrepresented on average in India






The very different population growth resulted in considerable imbalances over time. According to the 2001 census, the five most populous constituencies of Outer Delhi , Thane (in Maharashtra ), East Delhi , Kanakapura (in Karnataka) and Chennai North (in Tamil Nadu) each had more than 2 million voters, the four least populous ( Lakshadweep , Daman and Diu , Dadra and Nagar Haveli , Ladakh ) each had less than 250,000. In 2002 the constituency boundaries were redefined by the Delimitation Commission in line with the changed population situation. However, the number of constituencies per federal state, as it had been determined since 1975, was not changed for the reasons mentioned above and the political weight of the individual states in the Lok Sabha remained the same, although, for example, the population growth of the northern Indian states was significantly higher than that of the south Indian. If the constituencies had been distributed nationwide according to the principle of the same number of inhabitants as possible per constituency, the southern states would have had to give up up to 15 constituencies ( Andhra Pradesh 3 of 42, Tamil Nadu 7 of 39, Karnataka 1 of 28, Kerala 4 of 20), while the northern states would have gained 15 (Uttar Pradesh with Uttaranchal 5, Bihar with Jharkhand 3, Madhya Pradesh with Chhattisgarh 3, Rajasthan 4). These imbalances have increased since then, as the population growth of northern India was significantly higher than that of southern India. In the 2014 election , there were an average of more than 1.7 million voters per MP from Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, while in Kerala there were only 1.2 million voters per MP.

New constituency boundaries from 2008

The recommendations of the commission established in 2002 were put into effect on February 19, 2008 by President Pratibha Patil with her signature. The constituencies of the four northeastern states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and the constituencies of Jharkhand were left unchanged. H. in these states, the constituency boundaries that came into force in 1976 (or 2001 in the case of Jharkhands) still apply. The reason for the postponement in the first four states was that the validity of the 2001 census in these states had been challenged in the Gauhati High Court and the Supreme Court (in the case of Manipur). In Assam, it was feared that illegal immigrants from Bangladesh had been entered on the electoral roll. In Manipur there were differences over the planned increase in the number of constituencies for scheduled tribes . In Arunachal Pradesh, the Nyishi tribe were reluctant to lose three constituencies to the regional parliament. In Nagaland, politicians wanted to increase the number of constituencies in the regional parliament from 60 to 80. In Jharkhand there was resistance from the Adivasi population to the loss of three constituencies reserved for scheduled tribes . In Jammu and Kashmir, too, no new constituencies were delimited. This was due to the special constitutional status of this state, according to which the new delimitation must be initiated by a separate federal commission, which has not yet taken place.

All elections starting March 20, 2008 follow the newly established constituency boundaries. The election for Lok Sabha 2009 was the first nationwide election since 1977 with newly drawn constituency boundaries nationwide. At the same time, the 84th amendment to the Constitution, which came into force in 2002, stipulated that the constituencies established in 2002 should, for the reasons mentioned above, remain unchanged for 25 years until at least 2026.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The respective Delimitation Act or Delimitation Order came into force after the signature of the Indian President
  2. ^ Delimitation Orders. Indian Electoral Commission, accessed February 15, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Delimitation Order 2008. (PDF) In: The Gazette of India. February 19, 2008, accessed February 15, 2015 .
  4. ↑ a b c The Delimitation Commission Act, 1952. (PDF) In: The Gazette of India. Ministry of Law, January 7, 1953, accessed May 25, 2014 .
  5. ↑ a b The Commission. Retrieved May 25, 2014 (current members of the Delimitation Commission). with a link to the current associate members
  6. ↑ a b The Delimitation Commission Act, 1962. (PDF) In: The Gazette of India. Ministry of Law, December 21, 1962, accessed May 25, 2014 .
  7. ↑ Frequently asked questions. (PDF) Delimitation Commission, accessed on May 25, 2014 .
  8. ^ The Delimitation Act, 1972. Delimitations Commission of India, accessed May 25, 2014 .
  9. ^ Delimitation Acts. Delimitation Commission, accessed May 25, 2014 .
  10. ^ Statistical Report on General Elections, 1951 to the First Lok Sabha. (PDF) Election Commission of India, accessed May 30, 2014 .
  11. ^ Statistical Report on General Elections, 1957 to the Second Lok Sabha. (PDF) Election Commission of India, accessed May 30, 2014 .
  12. ^ Statistical Report on General Elections, 1962 to the Third Lok Sabha. (PDF) Election Commission of India, accessed May 30, 2014 .
  13. ^ Statistical Report on General Elections, 1967 to the 4th Lok Sabha. (PDF) Election Commission of India, accessed May 30, 2014 .
  14. ^ Statistical Report on General Elections, 1971 to the 5th Lok Sabha. (PDF) Election Commission of India, accessed May 30, 2014 .
  15. ^ Statistical Report on General Elections, 1977 to the 6th Lok Sabha. (PDF) Election Commission of India, accessed May 30, 2014 .
  16. ↑ Archive of General Election 2014> Statewise numbers of electors. Indian Election Commission, accessed December 19, 2014 .
  17. ↑ THE CONSTITUTION (FORTY-SECOND AMENDMENT) ACT, 1976. Indian Ministry of Justice, filed by the original on March 28, 2015 ; accessed on April 18, 2015 .
  18. ↑ Delimitation freeze distorts constituencies sizes. rediff.com, February 5, 1998, accessed December 17, 2014 .
  19. ↑ India votes 2004. rediff.com, April 12, 2004, accessed April 25, 2014 .
  20. ^ Sanjay Kumar: Delimitation of constituencies. (No longer available online.) The Hindu, September 17, 2001, archived from the original July 14, 2014 ; accessed on June 20, 2014 .
  21. ↑ THE DELIMITATION (AMENDMENT) BILL, 2008. (PDF) 2008, accessed on December 26, 2016 (English, addition to the Delimitation Act 2008 , which postponed the new constituency boundaries in the named 5 states to 2016).
  22. ↑ DELIMITATION OF PARLIAMENTARY AND ASSEMBLY CONSTITUENCIES ORDER, 2008. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Delimitation Commission of India, archived from the original on April 25, 2015 ; accessed on February 15, 2015 .
  23. ↑ Delimitation notification comes into effect. The Hindu, February 20, 2008, accessed February 15, 2015 .
  24. ↑ Delimitation deferred in 5 states. The Times of India, January 11, 2008, accessed December 26, 2016 .
  25. ^ Ashutosh Kumar: Coping with the Delimitation: New Electoral Strategies . In: Ajay K. Mehra (Ed.): Emerging Trends in Indian Politics: The Fifteenth General Election . Routledge, New Delhi 2010, ISBN 978-0-415-56319-2 , chap. 2 (English).
  26. ↑ THE CONSTITUTION (EIGHTY FOURTH AMENDMENT) ACT, 2002. Indian Ministry of Justice, accessed on April 19, 2015 (English).
  27. ↑ Freeze on LS seats until 2026. In: The Times of India. August 24, 2001, accessed May 25, 2014 .