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Freeze on seats a victory for DMK

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam may have won a small victory now that the Union cabinet has decided to freeze the size of legislatures across the country at the existing figures, based on the 1971 census for another 25 years.

Since this comes soon after Prime Minister A B Vajpayee acted on Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi's missive on the 'RSS row', the DMK can claim that it stood up for the Dravidian cause and succeeded.

The DMK was the only political party to object to representation being based on populations. DMK leader and Union Industry Minister Murasoli Maran had apparently mentioned this at a party general council meeting. Following this, Karunanidhi had written a letter to the prime minister, pointing out that legislature sizes based on populations could deter states from practising effective population control measures.

Karunanidhi pointed out that states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala have population growth rates below the national average. He said that the lower birth rates in Tamil Nadu meant that the number of its Lok Sabha seats would reduce from the existing 39 to 33 if delimitation of seats, due in 2001, comes into effect. Other southern states, which too have done well on the population control front, stand to suffer. But north Indian states, which have a higher birth rate, will get more representation in the Lok Sabha.

Parliamentary strength is already heavily loaded against the south, and any delimitation exercise, without providing for an in-built corrective mechanism, would only widen the north-south gap.

DMK sources say the Bharatiya Janata Party's own analysts may have helped the Centre come to an early decision.

They pointed out that leaders like L K Advani had touted the presidential form of government when the BJP was doing well in Uttar Pradesh and other 'Hindi belt' states. That was before the Lok Sabha polls last year, when the BJP had little hope of support from the south or the east.

Advani's logic, they claim, is that the BJP could win presidential elections on the Hindi belt vote since it is the single largest vote bloc in the country. With no charismatic leader emerging in other parties, the BJP could thus have gained from a shift to a presidential system.

But the fact that the BJP had made inroads into the south and the east might have made it easier for them to consider freezing the number of seats, the source said.

One source said that, but for the Centre's decision, which he hopes will be carried through Parliament, the inequities of the past would be carried into the future.

"If the 1977 'Janata experiment' proved something, it was that you can rule India without south Indian votes and seats; you could rule India exclusively on the votes and seats from the north and the west," he says.

"The Janata Dal experiment of 1989 only reaffirmed this. If the 1996 situation gave the south, rather the non-north states a say in choosing the prime minister, it was only because of the peculiarity of the circumstances. But subsequent events proved that the strings were always held -- and pulled -- by the rest."

Though the DMK has not officially claimed credit, the Centre's decision has bucked up the party, which has always looked up for endorsement from Delhi.

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