Not a Full House: Why India’s New Parliament Building Will Remain Unfilled

India’s new parliament building was inaugurated in May this year, and yet its seats are not completely filled with lawmakers. The current number of elected lawmakers to the Lok Sabha – the country’s lower and more powerful house – is 543, while the new building can accommodate 888 of them. Expanding the space for parliamentarians was one of the main reasons to construct a new building in the first place (apart from many issues with the old technologies used in the previous, nearly century-old, building). 

The delay in filling the additional seats is rooted in the fact that choosing new lawmakers would have to be preceded by a delimitation exercise that would chalk out new constituencies. This delay may drag on for years to come.

Let us take a step back in the logic of the process. India was to originally choose parliamentarians based on the population of each state. But the country’s population has grown dramatically, while the number of lawmakers has not been increased since the 1970s. A new parliament building has become a mathematical must, yet adjusting the number of lawmakers each state elects is itself a daunting task – one that needs to be preceded not only by a delimitation of constituencies, but also by a new census. 

The BJP government under Narendra Modi has had a new parliament building constructed. However, it has not only shied away from an effort at delimitation but also has not proceeded with a census. The government claims it will be unable to proceed with such an exercise for few more years. 

This is rather odd given that censuses had been held in India every 10 years for decades. The last was completed in 2011; the next should have been finished in 2021. While one reason given for the delay of the 2021 census was the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s 2023 now and despite the pandemic disruption, much has gone forward around the world. 

This has led some commentators in India to assume that the government may rather be avoiding the census (for now) to put on hold all controversies around delimitation that this would cause (just as previous governments have avoided this particular hot potato since 1976). India is headed for national elections in 2024, and thus the government may not prefer to dip into the delimitation controversy before the nation goes out to vote. 

What the government has achieved is Step 3 in a process that must eventually tackle Step 1 (a census) and Step 2 (delimitation).

The heated arguments that surround the idea of distributing the numbers of Indian lawmakers across the states is a subject I covered, when it comes to theory, in a November 2021 commentary available at The Diplomat’s website (“Equality or Fraternity? Challenges of India’s New Constituency Delimitation”). 

Where does the debate stand now?

In a nutshell: The battle lines in the debate on the principles behind delimitation remain drawn along the same axes as national political divides. When recently asked about this topic, some of politicians from the less-populated south of India said that they will oppose delimitation and that it may become an issue in the 2024 election campaign. This does not have to indicate that they will oppose delimitation as such (though it may); it may instead mean that they will call for aspects other than population to be factored in before delimitation begins. 

One of their main points remains the same. Slowing down population growth is a must in India, and state governments were expected to pursue this aim. How can it be just to rearrange the number of lawmakers in the national Parliament based on how much the population of each state has grown? 

“It is absolutely ridiculous and very unfair that states which successfully implemented family planning are penalized, and states that are reckless are being incentivized,” said Dr. Kanimozhi MVN Somu, a representative of the DMK Party from the southern state of Tamil Nadu. 

Similar lines of argument are being raised not only by politicians of local parties from the south but also by some representatives within the second largest party in the country: The leaders of the opposition Indian National Congress (such as K.S Suresh Reddy from Telangana and Karti Chidambaram from Tamil Nadu). 

Responding to such concerns, another politician from the south, but representing the top national party, K. Annamalai, confirmed that his BJP would go ahead with delimitation and promised that it would be a “fair” and “equitable” process. He noted that there are regional concerns connected to delimitation, in particular about how one region may lose in comparison to another within a given state. Yet this point does not at all push away the concerns that are raised on the national level. 

An Indian journalist, a well-known editor for The Print portal, Shekhar Gupta, also pointed out that the list of states where population growth has slowed the most includes not only those in the south, such as Kerala (known for its progressive policies), but also some states in the north, like Punjab as well as Jammu and Kashmir. Population growth has been highest in the two northern Hindi-speaking states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (once again stressing that we are basing these figures on the 2011 census and later estimates, due to lack of a new census since). The same two states are among India’s poorer, less developed regions, and those where progressive social policies have been least successful. At the same time, Uttar Pradesh is, and always has been, the country’s most populous state (and thus with a largest number of lawmakers in the Parliament); Bihar is third.

Uttar Pradesh and some of other northern states with a rising population (like Rajasthan) also happen to be the backbone of the ruling BJP’s recent electoral successes on the national level. To some extent, therefore, it may be said that some of the more important states where population growth has decreased are the ones that are less likely to vote for the incumbent BJP (such as those of the south or Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir in the north). At the same time, those states where population growth was higher have recently provided the BJP with the support of a large part of the electorate. 

This could suggest that the BJP will indeed push forward with delimitation at some point, while its main rival, the Congress, may choose to rally regional parties against the idea. Yet, by doing this, the main opposition party would risk alienating a part of its northern electorate. Winning in the north is necessary to win in the whole country (which is not true for the south).

There are some notable exceptions to this generalization, however. For instance, Gujarat, Modi’s home state, has been doing better in economic terms. While being one of the most stable sources of major support for the BJP, it is facing slower population growth. The BJP’s dominance in Bihar, a poor state with an exploding population, is also not that obvious as it depends on allies. West Bengal is the country’s fourth most populous state and has an estimated population growth of 9 percent. The BJP has faced trouble in establishing a meaningful political presence in the state. 

Some cases pose even more unknowns. Maharashtra is the country’s second most populous state, with an estimated growth of 9 percent, but is also a state where the BJP has become a victim of its own success. Its popularity rose at the expense of an ally, and thus the ally has deserted it.

The crux of the matter, however, is that the population balance is already skewed in favor of India’s north, and even more, in favor of the Hindi-speaking states of the north. This fact was true when India declared independence. The success of social policies in parts of the south and their failure in parts of the north have been just one more aspect adding to this disproportion. And thus no national party, be it the BJP or Congress, can ignore the fact that the country’s defining electorate is located in the Hindi heartland. 

This electorate stands to benefit if the number of lawmakers is to be changed based on population shifts. The counterpoint to this would be that the south will certainly be irate if population-based delimitation is introduced, while the Hindi-speaking part of the north may be content with the current status quo. The Hindi-speaking north is already in electoral domination, and it will only deepen if population-based delimitation is pursued to expand the parliament. All of these factors explain why the BJP is postponing delimitation and why, for years to come and for the sake of political consensus, the Lok Sabha will remain a house not completely full.