By IANS
New Delhi : the government Thursday decided to implement the delimitation panel’s recommendations that will redraw parliamentary and legislative assembly constituency maps across the country.
The new maps, drawn to reflect India’s latest demographic profile, also mean that many leaders will have to look for new seats now.
“The cabinet decided to recommend to the president to notify the recommendations of the Delimitation Commission,” Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi told reporters.
“This will bring the new delimitation orders issued by the Delimitation Commission into force and pave the way for election to the House of the People and the legislative assembly of each of the new territorial constituencies,” he said.
The cabinet also gave its assent to a new order of the commission under the Delimitation Act, 2002 in respect of 24 states and union territories to specify a date on which it shall be implemented.
The presidential notification will “supersede the (existing) Delimitation Order of 1976 and as a result the Representation of the People Act, 1950, will also be amended accordingly,” the minister explained.
After this notification the general category seats in the Lok Sabha will come down from 402 to 392 and the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe seats will go up correspondingly, with the total strength of the house remaining unchanged.
Similarly, in the state assemblies across the country, the Scheduled Caste seats will go up from 555 to 610 and Scheduled Tribe seats from 527 to 545.
Many leaders will now have to scout for new constituencies for the next general elections scheduled in 2009.
For instance, Home Minister Shivraj Patil’s Latur constituency is now reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates. Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee will also have to look for a new constituency.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s traditional constituency Akbarpur is no longer reserved.
Under the constitution, a delimitation exercise has to be undertaken every 10 years based on the latest census report. In effect, that implies taking into account the demographic changes in the country and redrawing the constituency maps accordingly.
Such exercises were carried out till the 1970s and the last one took place on the basis of the 1971 census. However, after that, the southern states started complaining that while they were promoting population growth control, many other states, especially Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, were getting higher representation in the Lok Sabha.
Moreover, the number of people in Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was going up across the country, necessitating greater representation in parliament and state assemblies.
The process remained in dispute for 30 years. A way was devised by the government whereby the number of seats from each state was to be left untouched but within the state the demographic imbalance in people’s representation was to be corrected and there were to be more reserved seats for the Scheduled Casts and Scheduled Tribes.
A Delimitation Commission under retired Supreme Court judge Kuldip Singh was set up in 2002, which submitted its report towards the end of 2007.
But the Commission’s work could not be completed in four states – Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh – after the Guwahati High Court stayed the exercise.
In Jharkhand, the Commission’s recommendations were not accepted because it reduced the number of seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes, and the tribal people of the state opposed it.
As a result the government brought in an ordinance some months back exempting the four northeastern states and also rejecting the Commission’s recommendations on Jharkhand.
A similar situation exists in Chhattisgarh from where tribal MPs and legislators had met United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi seeking exclusion of their state from the exercise. But their demand was not heeded.