Delimitation, Seat Reservation and Women's Reservation Act

Delimitation is the exercise of fixing the number of seats in a legislature and drawing the boundaries of the territorial constituencies from which they are filled, so that every vote carries roughly equal weight. Seat reservation decides which of those constituencies are set apart for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, and, after the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, for women. The three ideas belong together because the women's quota itself takes effect only after the next delimitation. Examiners ask the articles, the amendments and the years, and this note states each of them plainly.

The constitutional scheme

Article 81 fixes the composition of the Lok Sabha: not more than 530 members chosen from territorial constituencies in the states and not more than 20 representing the Union territories, which sets the ceiling of 550 elective seats. Article 81 also lays down two ratios: the ratio between a state's seats and its population must, so far as practicable, be the same for all states, and within a state the ratio between a constituency's population and the seats allotted to it must be the same throughout. Article 170 governs the legislative assemblies of the states, which must have between sixty and five hundred members chosen by direct election from territorial constituencies, with the same rule of uniform ratio inside the state. Article 82 is the engine of the whole exercise: upon the completion of each census, the allocation of Lok Sabha seats to the states and the division of each state into territorial constituencies shall be readjusted by such authority and in such manner as Parliament may by law determine. Article 170(3) carries the matching provision for the assemblies.

Parliament has done this through Delimitation Commission Acts, and four Delimitation Commissions have been constituted so far, in 1952, 1963, 1973 and 2002. A Commission is headed by a serving or retired judge of the Supreme Court as chairperson, with the Chief Election Commissioner or an Election Commissioner and the State Election Commissioner of the state concerned as ex officio members. Its orders, once published in the Gazette, have the force of law and cannot be called in question before any court, and the Lok Sabha and the assemblies may discuss them but not modify them. The Commission works on the published census figures, holds sittings in the states, hears objections, and keeps constituencies geographically compact and within district boundaries so far as possible.

The freeze on seats

Readjustment after every census meant that states which controlled their population growth would steadily lose seats to those which did not. To remove that penalty the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 froze the allocation of seats on the basis of the 1971 census until the census after 2000. The Constitution (Eighty-fourth Amendment) Act, 2001 extended the freeze on the allocation of seats among the states until the first census taken after the year 2026, while allowing the boundaries of constituencies inside a state to be redrawn. The Constitution (Eighty-seventh Amendment) Act, 2003 then changed the basis of that redrawing from the 1991 census to the 2001 census, which is the census the 2002 Delimitation Commission used. The effect is that the strength of the Lok Sabha and the share of each state have stayed as settled on the 1971 census, while constituency boundaries within states were last redrawn on the 2001 figures. A separate Delimitation Commission was constituted in 2020 for the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, and its order of 2022 fixed ninety assembly seats for the Union territory, forty-three in the Jammu division and forty-seven in the Kashmir division, and reserved seats for the Scheduled Tribes there for the first time.

Reservation of seats

Article 330 reserves seats for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha, and Article 332 does the same in the legislative assemblies of the states; the number is in proportion to their population in the state or Union territory. There is no reservation of seats for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes in the Rajya Sabha or in a state legislative council, because those houses are not filled by direct territorial election. A reserved constituency is not a separate electorate: every voter in it votes, but only a candidate belonging to the reserved group may contest. Article 334 sets a time limit on this reservation, which Parliament has extended from time to time, the latest extension having been made by the Constitution (One Hundred and Fourth Amendment) Act, 2019, which at the same time ended the nomination of members of the Anglo-Indian community. At the local level, Article 243D reserves seats in panchayats and Article 243T in municipalities for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their population, and reserves not less than one-third of all seats, and of the offices of chairperson, for women; those provisions came with the Constitution (Seventy-third Amendment) Act, 1992 and the Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992.

The Women's Reservation Act, 2023

The Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, given the short title Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, reserves one-third of the seats for women in the Lok Sabha, in the legislative assemblies of the states and in the legislative assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. It inserted Article 330A for the Lok Sabha, Article 332A for the state assemblies, and Article 334A on commencement and duration, and amended Article 239AA for Delhi. The one-third is counted on the total seats of the house and applies within the seats already reserved for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes as well, so one-third of those reserved seats go to women of those groups. The reservation does not extend to the Rajya Sabha or to the state legislative councils. Article 334A provides that the reservation shall come into effect after the first census taken after the commencement of the Act and after a delimitation carried out on the basis of that census, and that it shall continue for fifteen years, until Parliament by law provides otherwise, with the reserved seats rotating after each subsequent delimitation. Earlier attempts had failed: bills were introduced in 1996, 1998 and 1999 and lapsed, and the bill of 2008 was passed by the Rajya Sabha in 2010 but never taken up by the Lok Sabha.