Indian democracy has been based on the principle of universal franchise since independence. However, the actual manifestation of popular will in government is mediated by two simultaneous processes: the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system and the judicious distribution of seats in Parliament. The FPTP system means that the winner at the constituency level does not need to obtain a majority of votes to win the election. It is enough to be the first among others. The second means that a particular vote in a state can have different values in terms of sending an MP to the Lok Sabha. FPTP was a conscious choice made by our Founding Assembly.
The judicious distribution of seats in Parliament was not intended to be set in stone when the Constitution was adopted. The reason this distribution has remained unchanged over the past five and a half decades has been the political consideration of accommodating Southern states’ concerns about being politically short-term.
This debate is political. What is apolitical is to ask how the current statewide distribution of seats works when it comes to doing justice to the principle of one man, one vote, one value.
Here’s what HT’s analysis of the data shows.
India’s last census was conducted in 2011. This makes the state’s population figures outdated. Although we have population projections at the state level, they have proven to be far from reality in the past. HT has compared the number of voters in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections to calculate the number of voters for each parliamentary constituency (PC) to compare how well an MP from a state represents his or her constituents.
Kerala, which had 27.8 million voters and 20 MPs, had 1.39 million voters per MP, the lowest among major states and union territories. Followed by Tamil Nadu, where this number reached 1.6 million per MP. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh had 1.93 million voters each. This number was highest in Delhi, where it reached 2.17 million voters per MP. Among the large states, Rajasthan has the highest number of voters per MP.
How has this balance changed between 1971 and 2024?
This is the practical part of the discussion. The current state-level distribution of Lok Sabha seats has been done on the basis of 1971 Census figures. If we are to compare the change in the number of voters per MP between 1977 (this was the first Lok Sabha elections held after the first delimitation based on 1971 Census figures) and 2024, some states have seen much greater growth than others.
The number of voters per Member of Parliament has increased by six times in Delhi (the highest among the 15 states and Delhi after the merger of the new states with the original states in 1977) and only 2.3 times in Tamil Nadu. Certainly the highest growth rate among the major states was in Gujarat, where the figure is now 3.5 times what it was in 1977. This difference in growth rate has also changed, with this figure becoming higher and lower. In 1977, Tamil Nadu was at the top of the table and Delhi was at the bottom. Tamil Nadu is now second from the bottom and Delhi is at the top. (See chart 1)
How is this imbalance in the state reflected in political representation?
The debate over readjusting the state-level allocation of Lok Sabha MPs in line with the 2011 census data – so says the draft delimitation bill circulated to lawmakers, despite the government’s insistence that there will be no change in state proportional representation – has been criticized on two grounds: that it penalizes states that have done well in managing their population growth (mostly in the South) and that increasing the quota will benefit non-Southern states for the BJP because its support is limited in the South. How well represented are political parties in the current Lok Sabha compared to the actual voters of the country?
One way to look at this question is to compare the Lok Sabha MPs of each party in relation to the total number of voters in the constituencies from which they were elected. The Bharatiya Janata Party currently ranks fifth in number of voters per MP among parties with at least five MPs. The top four parties in this list are Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar), Shiv Sena, Janata Dal (United), and Samajwadi Party. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has the lowest number of voters per MP. The Congress is rated slightly higher than the DMK in this regard. (See chart 2)
It would certainly be simplistic to jump to conclusions by comparing the number of voters per Member of Parliament at the state level in the distribution of Lok Sabha seats among states in India. There is significant variation among voters for each parliamentary constituency, even within states. (See chart 3)
As is clear, any effort that attempts to find a perfect balance between universal enfranchisement and political or political representation in the Indian Parliament is unlikely to remain effective for long. Precisely for this reason, this exercise should be based on broad consensus rather than one-upmanship.
