TN MPs oppose Delimitation Bill at CM Vijay's meet, seek 543-seat freeze; DMK, AIADMK boycott

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay convened a meeting with Members of Parliament from the state on Saturday to discuss the Union government's Delimitation Bill and its potential impact on the state's parliamentary representation. According to Congress MP Karti Chidambaram, 21 of the state's 57 Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs attended the meeting, and there was unanimous agreement to resist any change in Tamil Nadu's current seat share.

"There was absolute unanimity that Tamil Nadu's rights must be preserved. Our representation in Parliament cannot be diminished. Any kind of alteration and delimitation, either on the basis of population or on a proportionate increase, will be resisted," Chidambaram said after the meeting held at Kalaivanar Arangam, a government auditorium near the Secretariat.

He further stated that the attending MPs have called for freezing the Lok Sabha at its current strength of 543 members and preserving the existing distribution of seats among states. "Tamil Nadu will have 39 members in a House of 543. We are clear in our unanimous opinion that a larger Parliament will be an ineffective Parliament, and Tamil Nadu will not be well served by a larger Parliament," Chidambaram added.

However, the meeting was boycotted by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the two major political parties in the state. Senior DMK leader A Raja dismissed the deliberations as "a farce, a laughable exercise," asserting that the TVK government was discussing an issue on which it had no clarity. The AIADMK, in a statement, called the meeting a "hurriedly staged drama," noting that no fresh delimitation Bill has been introduced in Parliament and there has been no official announcement on the exercise.

The Delimitation Bill is linked to the implementation of the Women's Reservation Act, 2023 (Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam), which provides for 33 percent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies. The Act’s implementation requires a delimitation exercise to redraw constituency boundaries, a process that has drawn concerns from southern states, which fear losing parliamentary seats to more populous northern states.

The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, which sought to link the reservation's implementation to delimitation, failed to pass in the Lok Sabha on April 17, falling short of the required two-thirds majority. Opposition parties, including the Congress, have supported the reservation but have repeatedly demanded that it be delinked from the delimitation process.

The meeting's attendees expressed their opposition to any delimitation based on population figures, arguing that it would reduce Tamil Nadu's representation despite the state's achievements in population control and governance. The issue has become a point of political contention, with leaders from southern states asserting that such an exercise would penalise states that have effectively implemented family planning programmes.

This development comes amid ongoing debates over the future composition of the Lok Sabha and the balance of political power among states. The stand taken by the attending MPs indicates a united front among those present, even as the absence of the DMK and AIADMK underscores the political divisions within the state on how to address the issue.