NDA to revive delimitation push, may look beyond allies

NEW new delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party-led subject popular confederation, which completed 12 years in force at the Centre on Tuesday may make a fresh bid to elicit support from other political parties for the passage of the delimitation bill in the Lok Sabha, where it lacks numbers, said people aware of the details. The coalition which is the single largest bloc in the Rajya Sabha does not have the numbers for the passage of the bill in the Upper House either.Its efforts are back in the news given the churn in the Trinamool Congress (TMC), a section of whose MPs are threatening to break away and are likely support the BJP and amid speculation that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which has exited the INDIA bloc of opposition parties, is talking to the BJP.The Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty First Amendment) Bill, 2026 or the Delimitation Bill, which seeks to redraw boundaries based on the 2011 census and is a prerequisite for implementing the 33% quotas for women in legislatures, requires a two-thirds majority for passage, which the NDA does not currently have.According to people aware of the details, the government may revisit some provisions of the bill to garner support from parties not aligned with the Opposition’s INDIA bloc.“We had detailed discussions with parties including those from the South, which had major reservations about the delimitation bill. We assured them that none of these states would suffer, as the overall number would increase, but since Tamil Nadu and Kerala were election-bound, they chose not to support the bill. Now, the government will reach out again with more clarity.” said a party functionary aware of the details.The bill, unlikely to be introduced in the upcoming Monsoon Session, was defeated in the extended Budget session, when the NDA with 293 members in the 543-member Lok Sabha failed to secure the support of opposition parties. A split in the Trinamool Congress, with 20-odd MPs on Monday indicating their decision to support the NDA in the Lok Sabha, has piqued hopes for the easy passage of the bill, even as all eyes are on parties such as the DMK that has 22 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 8 in the Rajya Sabha.“We don’t have the required numbers right now… In the past the party had reached out to senior DMK leaders including (former CM) MK Stalin and TKS Elangovan but they must have felt that taking an anti-delimitation stand would help them…” said a second party functionary.To reach the requisite number for the bill’s passage in the Lok Sabha, the government has indicated that it will clarify how the overall seats will be increased to ensure that states where population control measures were followed, do not lose out. There was no written assurance about the increase in the number of seats in the earlier bill.In the current 540-member Lok Sabha, the NDA has 293 members and needs 360 for the bill’s passage, whereas it needs 164 votes in the 245-member Rajya Sabha, where it is 149 strong.“The government will see how it can address the concerns of the opposition including the fear that seats in the Southern region will shrink…and whether their demand for the baseline can be met,” said the first functionary.The opposition parties including the DMK, had demanded that instead of carrying out the delimitation on the basis of the 2011 Census, the government should continue with the 1971 population baseline so that states that have stabilised their population are not penalised. The government’s verbal assurance that the seats would be increased proportionately for all states did not cut ice with the Southern states, which feared states where population had continued to grow, such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar would benefit at their cost.The government had proposed to delink the delimitation process from the ongoing Census, to carve out new constituencies based on the 2011 Census and increase the overall seats in the Lok Sabha from 543 to 816 of which 273 would be reserved for women.