Delimitation will punish states that controlled population: Congress | India News

NEW DELHI: In first remarks on delimitation since a fresh row on the fraught issue broke out last month, Congress Tuesday said states which achieved early success in family planning will lose seats because of the redrawing of constituencies as per the population criteria. The party said delimitation will “penalise” the states that worked in line with the national objective, listing key northern states as major gainers and southern and eastern states as losers.
Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said, “The distribution of seats across states in the Lok Sabha is presently based on the 1971 Census. Article 82 that was amended with effect from Feb 2002 provides for a fresh distribution based on the population data from the first Census after 2026.”
He quoted a study done by Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hintson in 2019, which distributed seats across the states based on the estimated population in 2026. As per its findings, Ramesh said, “The states that lose seats are Tamil Nadu (8), Kerala (8), Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (8), Odisha (3), West Bengal (4), Karnataka (2), Himachal Pradesh (1), Punjab (1) and Uttarakhand (1).” He added that Assam, J&K and Maharashtra will not gain or lose any seats. “The states that gain are Uttar Pradesh (11), Bihar (10), Rajasthan (6), Madhya Pradesh (4), Jharkhand (1), Haryana (1), Gujarat (1), Delhi (1), and Chhattisgarh (1).”
Ramesh said the states that controlled population “will be penalised for it”.
While Congress has in the past said that delimitation should not hurt the states which performed well in population control, this is its first remark after a controversy broke out following the red flag raised by Tamil Nadu last month. There has been a view that as a national party, Congress may prefer to play safe as opposing delimitation on population criteria may result in a backlash in the heartland states whose share would go up in such an exercise.
DMK head and TN chief minister MK Stalin Friday wrote to his counterparts of southern states and Odisha, West Bengal and Punjab to be part of a Joint Action Committee launched for an “uncompromising fight against this unfair exercise”. He has also invited CPI(M), CPI, Congress, AIMIM, JD(S), Akali Dal, YSRCP, TDP, BRS, Jana Sena, TMC, AAP and BJP units of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Punjab, Odisha and West Bengal for a meeting on March 22.