Uncertainty dogs redrawing of constituencies even after the government has tabled the Delimitation Commission [DC] report in respect of 25 states in Parliament. Reason: several parties don’t want the reshaping of seats to come into effect now.

 The government tabled the DC report relating to 25 states – including Karnataka - in the two Houses on November 23, taking it a step closer to the Presidential notification after which it will have to be implemented.
However, sensing danger closing in, several parties are pressuring the government to convene an all party meeting to discuss delimitation. According to informed sources, the reasons these parties are forwarding are two-fold: one, cases relating to four states are pending in Supreme Court and until they are disposed of, notification should not be issued.

Two, with less than one and a half years to go for Lok Sabha elections [not to speak of Assembly elections], MPs are left with hardly any time to familiarise with their future constituencies.

 The parties also want to know when the report would come into effect and want a discussion on population as the sole criterion for constituency restructuring. There is also the question mark over the Women’s Reservation Bill.

These sources told Deccan Herald here on Saturday that the government may convene a meeting soon after the winter session which ends on December 7. The issue informally figured at a business advisory committee of Lok Sabha last week wherein floor leaders urged the government to call an all-party meeting.

 The UPA government, on the face of it, does not want to be seen as a spoilsport and has set up a Group of Ministers [GOM] headed by senior minister Pranab Mukherjee and is talking to different parties on the issue. There is a division within the UPA with some parties like the DMK and NCP and even the Left in favour of accepting the DC report and minister Lalu Prasad against it. The Congress and BJP seem to be in favour of it with Congress chief spokesman Veerappa Moily stating that tabling the report was an emphatic indication of the government that it wanted to go ahead with the process and BJP general secretary Anant Kumar observing that his party was in favour of the DC report. The delimitation process has been questioned before the apex court in respect of 18 seats of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh. 

The government has also been facing the heat from NGOs as the Delhi Study Group has approached the SC seeking a direction to the government to implement the DC report.

Delay
Charging the government of deliberately delaying seeking Presidential consent, it pointed out that in states such as Kerala, North-East as well as others, the DC completed the process as long back as in May, 2005 but elections were held on the basis of the old 1971 census instead of 2001.

 According to the DC Act passed by Parliament in 2002, the Presidential notification can be issued for individual states or collectively or severally.

Thus, there is no bar that the notifications should be issued at one go for all the states.