Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K Stalin posted a video message on X today ahead of his all-important joint action meeting on delimitation scheduled to take place on Saturday 22nd March 2025.
His call for consensus across the five southern states of India comes amid a proposed delimitation process due to take place next year. India’s constitution mandates that parliamentary seats directly correlate with the size of a constituency’s population. As the country’s population expands to almost 1.5 billion people, a new census will be the focal point determining how many representatives will stand for their state in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house. India redrew its parliamentary seats following population censuses published in 1951, 1961 and 1971, but has since stopped.
The delimitation measure was brought in to ensure the one-person one-vote balance remained equal across neighbouring Indian states. However, through a combination of polarising fertility rates and a freeze on the delimitation exercise, the balance of democratic representation fell astray.
Uttar Pradesh (UP) which is home to over 240 million people has 80 MPs – three million constituents per MP. On the other hand, Kerala boasts a much more modest 1.75 million citizens per MP. The North-South Indian divide reaches beyond just population and extends to health, education and economic prospects. A child born in the south will be far more likely to see through the first year of her life, stay in school for longer and be far more likely to attend college.
Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister, M K Stalin, fears this progress will be unjustly punished as some of the most popular delimitation proposals could attempt to reel back South-Indian MPs from parliament. “States that have controlled their population growth, governed efficiently and contributed significantly to national progress must not be punished by the union government,” M K Stalin wrote, adding “we decided to unite the other affected states and fight together. To take this forward, I wrote letters to the Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana, Odisha, West Bengal and Punjab”.
The joint action meeting will seek to propose a “Fair Delimitation” to ensure no MPs are removed – a position that Tamil Nadu is particularly wary of given that they already have nine more MPs than their population share. Despite this, Mr Stalin added that as it stands, “if the delimitation exercise is carried out based on population size, our representation in parliament will be severely affected”. The South Indian leaders have joined with counterparts in Punjab to urge the government to continue with the same electoral boundaries for another 30 years.
For Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister, the consequences would impact more than just the number of MPs. In his video message on X, he adds that, “this is about our state rights… Our voices in parliament will be silenced. Our rights will be compromised. This is nothing short of a deliberate attempt to undermine certain states”. These comments come shortly after Modi’s federal government halted education funds to Tamil Nadu over an education policy that Mr Stalin has repeatedly coined as a “Hindutva policy” and subsequently, refused to accept.
