India’s constitutional design gave fuller expression to citizen equality than to State dignity. This imbalance reflected the Republic’s birth amid Partition, uncertainty, one-party dominance, and the integration of 14 provinces and 552 princely states of extraordinary disparity, with future territorial reorganisation still in contemplation.
At that time, all regions of India were broadly high-fertility regions; the sharp inter-State fertility divergence emerged only later. Had today’s linguistic States, demographic asymmetry, and genuinely plural party system existed in 1950, India’s constitutional architecture, including its approach to representation and delimitation, would almost certainly have taken a different course. In S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994), the Supreme Court affirmed that federalism forms part of the Constitution’s Basic Structure and is “not a matter of administrative convenience, but one of principle—the outcome of our own historical process and a recognition of the ground realities”.
Yet constitutional principle must find institutional expression. To transform that insight from a pious declaration into living constitutional reality, India must reconsider its architecture of parliamentary representation—in the Rajya Sabha, the Lok Sabha, and the coming battle over delimitation.
The Rajya Sabha has remained a council of States in name alone. A federation ordinarily has two Houses for a reason. The Lower House represents citizens according to population; the Upper House represents constituent units politically, ensuring that smaller States are not submerged by demography or reduced to constitutional insignificance. If both Houses are substantially population-weighted, the Upper House becomes a replica, not a safeguard, and bicameralism loses its federal purpose.
This is precisely India’s predicament. The Rajya Sabha, although called the Council of States, is in substance a population-weighted chamber. Under the Fourth Schedule, State representation ranges from 1 to 31 seats, with a median of 6. The 5 largest States account for nearly 46 per cent of Lok Sabha seats and about 41 per cent of Rajya Sabha seats; the 10 largest account for about 70 per cent and 63 per cent respectively. Demographic dominance is thus reinforced in both Houses.
Comparative federal experience underlines India’s anomaly. In the US, every State elects 2 Senators regardless of population: California, with 52 members in the House of Representatives, and Delaware, with just 1, have 2 Senators each. Australia gives each State 12 Senators; Brazil gives every State and the Federal District 3; and Switzerland gives 2 representatives to each canton, with limited exceptions. Canada secures regional balance through four principal Senate divisions of 24 seats each.
These arrangements differ in detail but rest on one federal philosophy: the Upper House must serve as a counterweight, assuring smaller constituent units that they may be smaller but never subordinate.
In the Constituent Assembly, Lokanath Misra urged equal representation in the Rajya Sabha, capped at three per State, lest it become an “unnecessary duplication of the House of the People”. K.T. Shah similarly favoured equal representation, proposing five elected members per State; he argued that the Upper House should represent the “territory of the Unit” and its special interests, not the “people pure and simple”. Both amendments were rejected.
Successive Union–State commissions have revisited the question. The Rajamannar Committee (1969-71) and the Punchhi Commission (2007-10) recommended equal representation for States in the Rajya Sabha, although the Sarkaria Commission (1983-88) did not. More recently, the Justice Kurian Joseph Committee on Union-State Relations (2025-), of which this author is a member, recommended six Rajya Sabha seats for every State. Such equality would supply the counterbalance that India’s federal design currently lacks.
Domicile requirement
Another defect arose in 2003, when Parliament amended Section 3 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, removing the requirement that a Rajya Sabha candidate be an elector in the State or territory from which they seek election. It is now sufficient if they are an elector anywhere in the country. This has enabled the parachuting of candidates into States with which they have little social, linguistic, cultural, or political connection, making them representatives in form but often not in substance.
In Kuldip Nayar v. Union of India (2006), the Supreme Court upheld this amendment, treating the domicile requirement as statutory rather than constitutional. Both the Punchhi Commission and the Kurian Joseph Committee have recommended restoring the domicile requirement.
The provision for 12 nominated members further weakens the Rajya Sabha’s federal character by allowing Union executive influence in a chamber meant to represent the States. India must honour excellence in literature, science, the arts, and social service, but such recognition need not take the form of Union nominations to the Council of States, whose members should be elected only by State legislatures. Both the Rajamannar and Kurian Joseph committees have recommended abolishing the practice.
Article 80 should accordingly be amended to constitutionally entrench equal representation for States (six per State), restore the domicile requirement, abolish presidential nominations, and transform the Rajya Sabha into a genuine, wholly elected Council of States.
The Lok Sabha is the House of the People; therefore, population must count. Articles 81 and 82 allocate seats among States broadly in proportion to population, except for States and Union Territories with populations below 60 lakh, and require constituencies within each State to be of roughly equal population.
Delimitation Commission chairman A. Shahjahan holding a hearing on the delimitation of wards in local bodies, in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district on January 16, 2025. The hearing was the first in a series of district-level hearings in the State.
| Photo Credit:
LEJU KAMAL
But India is not an undifferentiated mass of voters; it is a Union of States, each with its own language, culture, and history. In so vast, diverse, and unequal a federation, a rigid population-based model creates two dangers: it reduces smaller States to near invisibility and penalises States that successfully reduced fertility by diminishing their political weight.
How smaller States are affected
1. Marginalisation of smaller States
First, let us look at the 10 smallest States: Nagaland, Mizoram, and Sikkim, with one Lok Sabha seat each; Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, and Goa, with two each; Himachal Pradesh, with four; and Uttarakhand, with five. Together they constitute nearly 36 per cent of the States, yet account for barely 4 per cent of Lok Sabha seats: 22 out of 543. Uttar Pradesh alone commands 80 seats, or 14.7 per cent of the House, nearly 3.6 times their combined strength. When some States feel they count for too little, the Union’s moral authority is weakened.
This concentration of influence has long troubled federal thinkers. During the deliberations of the Justice Fazl Ali–led “States Reorganisation Commission” (1953-55), K.M. Panikkar, in his Note of Dissent, warned that “the present imbalance, caused by the denial of the federal principle of equality of units, has been to create feelings of distrust and resentment in all the States outside Uttar Pradesh”.
Uttar Pradesh then held 86 of 489 Lok Sabha seats—nearly 18 per cent of the House—a share Panikkar regarded as conferring it a hegemonic influence over national politics. That warning remains relevant today.
Brazil’s 1988 Constitution offers a useful solution. Like India, Brazil is federal, continental in scale, populous, unequal, and regionally imbalanced, with 26 States and a Federal District. Its model of degressive proportionality rests on four principles: every constituent unit receives a minimum number of seats; a ceiling is imposed on the largest unit; larger units receive more seats than smaller ones; and smaller units enjoy greater representation per capita.
Brazil’s Lower House (Chamber of Deputies) has 513 seats. Every State is guaranteed at least 8 seats, while the strength of São Paulo, the largest State, is capped at 70, nearly 40 fewer than under strict proportionality.
This deliberate federal safeguard moderates the dominance of the populous and prosperous south and south-east while strengthening the voice of the sparser and poorer north and northeast. Brazil’s Senate completes the compact by giving every State and the Federal District three Senators, irrespective of population.
The European Parliament also follows degressive proportionality. Its membership is capped at 750, plus the President, with each member-state guaranteed at least 6 seats and none permitted more than 96.
Germany, with 836 lakh people, has 96 seats: 1 Member of European Parliament (MEP) for every 8.7 lakh citizens. Denmark, with about 60 lakh people, has 15 seats: 1 MEP for every 4 lakh citizens. Malta, with barely 5.5 lakh people, has 6 seats: 1 MEP for about 91,500 citizens.
Thus, citizens of smaller member-states enjoy much higher representation per capita. This deliberate departure from a rigid “one person, one vote” arithmetic ensures that smaller nations retain a meaningful voice and the Union preserves legitimacy and cohesion.
Degressive proportionality
Applied to India, a modified degressive proportionality framework could impose a ceiling of 80 Lok Sabha seats for the largest State, Uttar Pradesh, while guaranteeing a meaningful floor of, say, 5 seats for the smallest States—Nagaland, Mizoram and Sikkim—now represented by only 1 MP each.
Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Goa (now two MPs each) could receive six seats apiece, while Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand could rise from four and five seats to eight and nine, respectively. The remaining States could broadly retain their present representation.
Adding 4 seats each to the 10 smallest States would increase the Lok Sabha’s size from 543 to 583 seats; its maximum strength may be raised from 550 to 590. This would be a modest expansion, not an unwieldy one. It would strengthen smaller States, especially in the north-eastern region, check demographic dominance, preserve national cohesion, and make India more genuinely federal.
2. Uneven population growth
A second difficulty with strict population-based allocation is its perverse incentive: it punishes States that faithfully implemented India’s population policy and rewards those that lagged behind. For decades, the Union urged States to reduce fertility through education, public health, women’s empowerment, and family welfare. Several did so with notable success. To now tell them that their reward is fewer Lok Sabha seats and diminished influence over national legislation, taxation, constitutional amendments, fiscal transfers, and language policy would be not merely inequitable but a grave moral and constitutional wrong.
The total fertility rate (TFR), the average number of children a woman bears, tells the story. A TFR of 2.1 is regarded as replacement level (zero population growth). According to Sample Registration System (SRS) data, India’s TFR was 5.2 in 1971, ranging from 6.1 in Uttar Pradesh to 3.9 in Tamil Nadu. By 2001, it had declined to 3.1, but disparities persisted, ranging from 4.5 in Uttar Pradesh to 1.8 in Kerala.
The SRS data for 2024, released in May 2026, show that the divergence continues despite India’s TFR declining to 1.9. Bihar (2.9), Uttar Pradesh (2.6), Madhya Pradesh (2.4), Rajasthan (2.3), and Jharkhand (2.2) remain considerably above replacement level, while Delhi (1.2); Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and West Bengal (1.3); Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and Jammu and Kashmir (1.4); and Karnataka, Telangana, and Himachal Pradesh (1.5) are far below it.
It was to prevent the population policy from becoming a trap for the States that implemented it successfully that the 42nd Constitutional Amendment, 1976, froze the inter-State allocation of Lok Sabha seats at the 1971 Census levels until the first census after 2000. The 84th Amendment, 2001, extended the freeze until the first census after 2026. These were acts of constitutional statesmanship.
With Census 2027 commencing from April 1, 2026, the question is whether the freeze should be lifted or extended. If lifted, present-day Bihar and Tamil Nadu, which had 40 and 39 Lok Sabha seats respectively in 1971, could diverge sharply: Bihar rising to 50 and Tamil Nadu falling to 29.
Likewise, in the case of Rajasthan and present-day Andhra Pradesh, which had 25 seats each in 1971, we could see Rajasthan increasing to 31 seats and Andhra Pradesh declining to 20. Overall, 8 States and 1 Union Territory would gain seats, while 15 States would lose, and the federal balance would be significantly recast.
Telangana Jana Samithi president M. Kodandaram speaks at a seminar on how delimitation will affect south India, in Hyderabad on April 7, 2025. VCK leader Thol. Thirumavalavan and leaders of other parties are also present.
| Photo Credit:
NAGARA GOPAL
Expanding the Lok Sabha to 850 seats has been suggested as a way of ensuring that no State loses seats in absolute terms. But this merely prevents visible loss, not real loss. Kerala, for instance, may retain its 20 seats after expansion, yet its relative weight would decline from 3.68 per cent (20/543) to 2.35 per cent (20/850).
Federal equilibrium
The only way to preserve the existing federal equilibrium in an expanded House would be to freeze each State’s present percentage share and apply it to future expansions.
Yet, even in itself, large-scale expansion is undesirable. With a sanctioned strength of 550, the Lok Sabha is already among the world’s largest directly elected Lower Houses. An 850-member House would be unwieldy, dilute deliberative quality, and risk reducing Parliament to a ceremonial rubber stamp. Except for the limited increase required to implement degressive proportionality, substantial expansion is neither necessary nor advisable.
The freeze should not be lifted merely because a calendar date has arrived or extended indefinitely without an objective trigger. The proper test is not mere fertility decline but demographic convergence. Population-based reapportionment should be considered only when State TFRs fall within a predefined, narrow band around the national average. Until then, it would amount to an unjust and perverse redistribution of federal power.
The contrast with the US is instructive. There, reapportionment after each census produces only marginal shifts because fertility rates across States are broadly convergent. After the 2020 Census, 37 States saw no change in representation; one gained two seats, five gained one seat each, and seven lost one seat each.
India is differently placed. Its demographic divergence is wide enough to make delimitation politically destabilising.
Population trends
According to the UN World Population Prospects 2024, India’s population is projected to peak at about 1.7 billion around 2062 before gradually declining. Given the slow pace of convergence, and with the Hindi heartland several decades behind much of the rest of the country, the Kurian Joseph Committee recommended extending the freeze on inter-State Lok Sabha seat allocation at 1971 levels until 2126, or until the TFRs of all the States converge within a narrow band—say, ±10 per cent of the national average—whichever is earlier.
Periodic intra-State delimitation, however, should continue to reflect urbanisation and internal migration without altering the relative political weight of States in the Lok Sabha.
Articles 81 and 82 should accordingly be amended to provide for degressive proportionality in Lok Sabha representation, with a ceiling of 80 seats for the largest State and a floor of 5 seats for the smallest; a modest increase in the House’s maximum strength from 550 to 590; and continuation of the inter-State freeze until 2126 or until demographic convergence is achieved, whichever is earlier.
India should rethink the idea of representation in both Houses before Census 2027 turns demography into contestation. Leaders must rise above short-term electoral expediency, forge a national consensus, and create a durable federal settlement that balances citizen equality with State dignity, strengthens institutional legitimacy, and deepens cohesion and belonging across the Union.
K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty is a retired IAS officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre, a former Vice Chancellor of the Indian Maritime University, Chennai, and Member of Tamil Nadu’s High-Level Committee on Union-State Relations.
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