Lok Sabha reform: Delimitation must look beyond population logic
India has operated universal adult franchise since the first general election of 1951-52. Every adult citizen has an equal vote. Yet the weight of that vote is no longer equal across states. A Lok Sabha constituency in a populous northern state can contain far more people than one in a southern state. This is not an accident. It is the result of a constitutional freeze that began in the 1970s and was later extended.
That freeze was adopted for a defensible reason. States that reduced fertility in line with national population policy were not to be punished by losing seats in Parliament. But a temporary protection has become a structural distortion. India now faces a hard choice- restore population-based representation, preserve the political weight of states that succeeded in population control, or design a new formula that balances both concerns.