Stalin asks the PM’s assistance, calling delimitation “a sword hanging over southern states”

MK Stalin, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, said on Wednesday that he supported the women’s reservation bill but expressed worry about the upcoming redivision of parliamentary seats, calling it a Damocles Sword and pleading with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to allay concerns among southern states that the move will reduce their representation in Parliament.

The women’s reservation law, which passed the Lok Saha on Wednesday and said that it would go into force when delimitation is finished, has revived the controversy around delimitation, which involves the redrawing of constituency borders and the reapportioning of seats.

The number of legislative seats was frozen until the end of 2025 by the 84th amendment to the Constitution, passed in 2002. Long-standing concerns among southern states have been that any changes to the number of seats would favor the more populous northern states at the expense of south India’s relative influence in Parliament.

In a statement, Stalin said: “It is unfair that southern states, which have faithfully followed the Union government’s policies to control population growth, may be subjected to punitive measures during the constituency delimitation.”

He said that the delimitation hung over Tamil Nadu and South India like the Damocles sword.

“We must stop the political plot to decrease the political representation of South India and increase the number of MPs based on population. It is important to thwart any attempts to treat politically savvy Tamil Nadu unfairly.I implore the PM to guarantee that Tamil Nadu and other southern states, in particular, won’t see their representation decrease during the next population-based delimitation process,” added Stalin.

In India’s federal system, political representation has long been a sensitive topic. States with slow population growth, like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, have argued that they shouldn’t be penalized for containing population growth more successfully than states with soaring populations, like those in the Gangetic plains, because the logic of delineating parliamentary constituencies is primarily weighted by state population. The northern states, however, have rejected this claim, claiming that they are underrepresented and not given the weight of their population that they deserve.

A delineation like that, though, might be explosive. Political scientists Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hinston estimated in a 2019 article published in HT that the Lok Sabha delegation from Uttar Pradesh might increase from 80 to 143 in 2026, while those from Kerala and Tamil Nadu would stay at 20 and 39, respectively.

The Women’s Reservation Bill received support from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in the Lok Sabha, but Stalin questioned why the Union government linked the new legislation to a delimitation process for which no dates have yet been made public. Unfortunately, the efficacy of the present measure depends on the delayed census’s completion and the accompanying delimitation process’s completion in 2026, delaying its realization until 2029. People are intelligent enough to recognize the BJP’s hollow rhetoric, according to Stalin.

He referred to it as “strange” that the national party had not already passed this legislation. He charged the BJP for ignoring stakeholders and advancing the law in advance of the Lok Sabha elections the next year. “…The BJP is haunted by defeat. According to him, they are attempting to portray the 33% reserve measure as their accomplishment.

DMK leader Kanimozhi spoke before the Lok Sabha and stated, “This Bill was presented in secret… The precise date of implementation is unclear.

However, Stalin came under fire from K Annamalai, the state head of the BJP in Tamil Nadu, who claimed that just two of the 34 ministers in his cabinet were female. Only 12 women were filed by the DMK out of the 173 candidates for the 2021 assembly elections, down from 18 in 2016, which the leader said demonstrates a lack of commitment to increasing the participation of women.

“There are now INDI Alliance parties that violently opposed the rise in the number of women in parliament in the past. Your alliance’s legacy is this backwards strategy, Annamalai remarked.

This All India The law was also backed by the main opposition party in Tamil Nadu, Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. When the AIADMK was in power, according to general secretary Edappadi Palaniswami (EPS), his party boosted the representation of women in local bodies from 33% to 50%. “AIADMK was a pioneer in granting women’s reservations… I appreciate the new bill, which applies to everyone of India, EPS wrote on X.