By Rakesh Mohan Chaturvedi, IANS
New Delhi : A mammoth exercise that will redraw almost all parliamentary and state constituencies in India is waiting to be implemented if and when President Pratibha Patil assents.
The nationwide effort follows the recommendations of the Fourth Delimitation Commission, which seeks to make more or less uniform the voter population of all constituencies and may be implemented by May.
On Monday, a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan gave the government four weeks to reply to a petition by NGO Delhi Study Group, seeking implementation of the commission’s recommendations.
If the suggestions are implemented by May, the string of assembly elections scheduled for this year will be fought according to new maps – a prospect that is making many veteran politicians uneasy.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet approved the commission’s report Jan 3. The final approval will come from the president.
Under the recommendations, the number of Lok Sabha constituencies reserved for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities will go up in the 545-seat house from 78 to 84 and from 38 to 42 respectively.
This will eat into the share of the “general constituencies” as the total number of seats in the Lok Sabha and in the state assemblies has been frozen till 2025. The number of general seats in the Lok Sabha will fall to 392 from 402.
The total number of assembly constituencies in the country in the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe category will rise from 555 to 610 and from 527 to 545 respectively.
“We are keen on implementing the report. Once the president gives her assent, we will do our utmost to implement it in the next assembly elections,” an Election Commission official told IANS.
Some political parties were opposed to the exercise initially but have had a change of heart. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is one of them.
BJP spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told IANS: “Since independence the country has undergone a lot of political, social and demographic changes. As such, delimitation is required. We feel the commission’s report should be implemented without further delay.”
Naqvi, accompanied by Janata Dal-United leader Sharad Yadav, met Election Commission officials last week to demand the implementation of the proposals at the earliest.
One reason for the initial opposition to delimitation was that many prominent MPs would have to look for new constituencies because their existing seats would get thrown out of the general category.
The affected MPs include Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee (Bolpur), Kalyan Singh (Bulandshahr), Shivraj Patil (Latur), Raj Babbar (Agra) and Jitin Prasad (Shahjahanpur).
All these seats will now fall in Scheduled Caste category. Mayawati’s seat Akbarpur in Uttar Pradesh will now become a general constituency.
Bellary in Karnataka, from where Sonia Gandhi contested in 1999, will become a seat reserved for a Scheduled Caste candidate.
Railway Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Yadav first opposed the delimitation process because two Lok Sabha constituencies – Pataliputra and Patna Sahib – will be carved out of Patna constituency.
Also, his brother-in-law Sadhu Yadav will lose Gopalganj as it is to be categorised as a Scheduled Caste seat.
The Delimitation Commission has not covered Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland – which will go to polls soon – and also Manipur because of court cases challenging the exercise in these states.
Jammu and Kashmir – which has special laws – will have to set up its own delimitation commission.
Union territories like Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshdweep do not require any delimitation as they send only one MP each to the Lok Sabha.