As confusion prevails over the next delimitation process, sources in the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Congress told TNM that the seats are likely to be increased uniformly by 50% for all states and union territories so that their current share of seats in the Lok Sabha will remain unaltered.
The Union government introduced three Bills related to delimitation and women’s reservation in the Lok Sabha on April 16, Thursday. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said that voting on the Bills will be done at 4 pm on April 17.
Opposition parties have opposed these Bills, alleging that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was trying to bring in “unfair” delimitation in the guise of implementing women’s reservation. They have been arguing that redistributing Lok Sabha seats among states based on their population would end up punishing the southern states and others which have controlled their population growth effectively.
According to a TDP source, the BJP plans to increase each state’s seat share by exactly 50%. In the face of fierce protests from the opposition parties, the BJP or its allied parties are expected to move for an amendment to the Bill, which will bring in a uniform 50% increase to the existing seats.
However, it remains unclear if such a provision would be brought in as an amendment or merely as a verbal assurance. If it is the latter, that would put the TDP in a tricky position.
The opposition parties are likely to oppose the Bills despite the amendment because at the moment, there is no provision to increase the number of Rajya Sabha seats. Moreover, an equal increase in seats’ share across all states and union territories would not mean delimitation in its true sense.
In an interview with the Economic Times, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu expressed his complete support for the three Bills and stated that the number of seats should be delinked from the census. "You have to delink population and seats... Now the number of seats is doubled. I am 100% satisfied. This is the only way. They have finalised the right formula at this stage in a scientific manner,” he told ET.
The Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty-first Amendment) Bill, 2026, raises the Lok Sabha’s strength to 850 from 543 – 815 for states and 35 for union territories. However, this is an upper limit, the way seats were previously capped at 550.
With a 50% increase in seats, the total strength of Lok Sabha can be expected to go up to 815. A third of these seats – 272 – will be reserved for women.
Uttar Pradesh will gain the most seats (40), followed by Maharashtra (24) and West Bengal (21).
The Bill also alters Article 82 of the Constitution, which says that the next delimitation exercise will happen only after the first census taken after 2026 has been published. The Bill says that the Union government intends to operationalise one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and Assemblies “through delimitation exercise to be undertaken on the basis of the population figures of the latest published census.” (2011 Census)
The Delimitation Bill, 2026, on the other hand, says that a Delimitation Commission constituted by the Union government will carry out the exercise. It will comprise a current or former Supreme Court judge appointed by the Union government as the chairperson, along with the Chief Election Commissioner or an Election Commissioner nominated by the CEC, and the State Election Commissioner of the state concerned.
This means that while the redistribution of Lok Sabha seats among states will not depend on the 2011 Census, the redrawing of the boundaries of these newly defined 815 Lok Sabha constituencies will be based on this Census, which is the last published one.
Article 82 says that after every Census, the Lok Sabha seats allocated to each state and the division of constituencies will be readjusted. However, the redistribution of Lok Sabha seats among states has remained frozen since 1976, and was last done based on the 1971 Census. The boundaries of Lok Sabha and Assembly seats within states were last readjusted based on the 2001 Census.