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Shahid K Abbas in New Delhi
The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the introduction of the Delimitation Bill, 2002 in Parliament, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan said on Friday.
"The bill seeks to set up a Delimitation Commission, which will carry out the mandate of the Constitution (84th Amendment) Act, 2002," Mahajan said.
The Commission would remove disparities in the size of various electoral constituencies throughout the country, Mahajan said.
The Delimitation Commission will also review the number of constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, as provided for in the amended Article 82 and 170 of the Constitution.
Article 82 and 170, after being amended by the Constitution (84th Amendment) Act, 2001, provide for readjustment and the division of each State into constituencies on the basis of 1991 census figures, Mahajan added.
Citing the 'existing imbalance' in the division of seven Lok Sabha constituencies as against 70 assembly constituencies in Delhi, Mahajan said that in case the bill was adopted after getting clearance from the standing committee, it would be able to remove the 'existing imbalance'.
Delhi's seven Lok Sabha constituencies have a lopsided demographic profile with east and west Delhi alone having over seven million voters, while the Chandni Chowk constituency has less than 400,000 voters.
The majority of the 70 assembly segments also fall under Delhi (East) and Delhi (West) Lok Sabha constituencies.
If the proposed Delimitation Bill becomes an Act, each of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi will have 10 assembly segments under it.
Under the existing set-up, for example, in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar there are either five or six assembly seats within one Parliamentary constituency, with the exception of some district-wise overlapping due to the last delimitation.
Other states also have a similar pattern of fixed number of assembly seats under one Lok Sabha constituency.
Mahajan also did not rule out the possibility of a reshuffle of the SC and ST constituencies after the fresh delimitation.
He said the exercise could be finished within six to eight months with the help of information technology.
While there is a fixed formula to reserve a ST seat, the method adopted for reserving a SC seat is relatively fixed.
A tribal seat is decided on the basis of wherever their percentage of population is the highest, while a SC seat is decided on the basis of relatively higher SC population, within the percentage of seats that could be accorded to the community in a particular state.
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