Delimitation Bill: Hindi belt’s Lok Sabha share fell more than South’s since 1951

In the debate over whether northern states would gain in future expansion of the House of Commons at the expense of the South, the historical record tells a more complicated story. Between 1951 and 1977, when parliamentary seats were regularly redistributed after the census, the share of Lok Sabha seats fell in both the Hindi belt and the southern states. But the share in the Hindi belt fell more sharply – 3.1 percentage points, while in the South it fell by 1.2 percentage points.The main reason was not the dominance of the South over the North or vice versa, but the increased representation of the federal territories and the increased share of the western and eastern states. This comparison also needs to be read with caution: in 1951, before the reorganization of national languages, the map of India looked very different. By 1956, the states had more or less retained their present form, but several federal territories had little or no representation in the Lok Sabha at that time.

Taken together, the data show that changes in parliamentary representation are influenced not only by the North-South balance, but also by state reorganization, federalist representation and India’s evolving federal landscape.

► The 1951 elections were held before the country’s linguistic reorganization, so the country’s borders were very different from today’s borders ► After the 1956 reorganization, the states remained largely in their current form, but several Union Territories still had little or no representation in the Lok Sabha ► The decline in share is partly due to the increasing representation of federal territories and the growth of western and eastern states ► Even in 1977, the last election in this analysis, Daman and Diu did not exist as an independent federation, as Lok Sabha seats were not redistributed thereafter ► This comparison tracks the share of total Lok Sabha seats rather than the number of voters or constituency size per MP ►Figures for 1951 and 1957 refer to seats, not constituencies, as some constituencies elected two MPs at that time