NEW DELHI: DMK MPs on Sunday passed a resolution to take up delimitation and “Hindi-imposition” issue in the House in the upcoming session of parliament scheduled to resume on Monday.
After a meeting held under Tamil Nadu chief minister and party president MK Stalin, the parliamentarians said that the population based excercise will affect not just the southern states but also others including Odisha and West Bengal.
In the resolution the party vowed to take efforts to garner support from political parties from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana, Odisha, West Bengal and Punjab– all states that stand to lose LS seats post-delimitation and make them a part of the struggle against the Centre in this issue.
For this purpose, DMK MPs would coordinate with their colleagues from the alliance parties.
“This meeting resolves to support CM Stalin in all his efforts in this issue and take it up in the Parliament and ensure Tamil Nadu does not lose a single Lok Sabha seat,” the resolution read.
This comes amid the ongoing rift between Tamil Nadu chief minister and Centre over delimitation and New Education Policy.
Stalin expressed concern about the potential reduction in Parliamentary seats, attributing it to the state’s successful implementation of family planning initiatives. Stalin had also suggested newly married couples to start families quickly to ensure adequate political representation post-delimitation. He acknowledged the state’s successful family planning initiatives but expressed worry about their current implications. He also advised the couples to proper Tamil names for their future children.
Delimitation, a constitutional process in India, involves redrawing parliamentary and assembly constituencies to ensure equal population representation across electoral districts. This process determines how many representatives each state gets in Parliament based on population size.
The process is guided by specific constitutional provisions under Articles 82 and 170 of the Indian Constitution. Article 82 mandates that Parliament must enact a Delimitation Act after each national census to redefine Lok Sabha constituency boundaries and numbers.
Article 170 establishes guidelines for State legislative assembly delimitation, determining seat allocation based on population data.