Delimitation the boundary dispute at home

The Union government’s recent decision to start a delimitation exercise in four northeastern states, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur, and the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir has caused much consternation in the Opposition. Assembly elections are due in Assam next year and opposition parties see this as a pre-election manoeuvre. The constitutional validity of the move has also been questioned.The Opposition’s concern stems from the possible electoral fallout of a likely demographic reconfiguring of assembly constituencies expected in the delimitation exercise, which is technically the act of redrawing boundaries of Lok Sabha and state assembly constituencies to represent changes in population. The exercise also reworks the number of seats reserved for scheduled castes and tribes. The objective, in theory, is to provide fair representation to all segments of the population.There have been four previous iterations of this exercise in India. In the latest edition (2002-2008), the four northeastern states named above were excluded because the use of the 2001 Census as the basis of the exercise was challenged in Gauhati High Court. The basis of the challenge was the argument that Census 2001 data for these states was riddled with discrepancies. The Delimitation Act of 2002 was amended on January 14, 2008, to empower the president to postpone the exercise in these four states.On February 28 this year, President Ram Nath Kovind rescinded the deferment order of 2008, thereby clearing the decks for a delimitation exercise in these four states. On March 6, the Union law ministry issued an order announcing the formation of a Delimitation Commission to carry out the exercise, with former Supreme Court judge Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai as chairperson. S.K. Mendiratta, a former legal advisor to the Election Commission (EC), who advised it for over 50 years, wrote to the three election commissioners in June, saying that the law ministry’s notification setting up a Delimitation Commission violated the Representation of the People Act, 1950 (RPA)..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}In 2008, after the President had deferred delimitation in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur and Nagaland, Parliament decided that instead of creating another Delimitation Commission to redraw seat boundaries in these states, the exercise would be conducted by the EC. The RPA was amended, and a Section 8A introduced, to give the EC’s new assignment legal validity. On the two earlier occasions when the EC was charged with redrawing the boundaries of constituencies, in Delhi (1992) and Uttarakhand (2000), there was a technical freeze on delimitation exercises.Mendiratta assisted the EC on both occasions, and was also an advisor to the 2002 Delimitation Commission. Given that experience, Mendiratta’s words do carry weight, but not everyone agrees with him. “Let’s not forget that the delimitation of these four states is being done under the Delimitation Act, 2002,” says former chief election commissioner O.P. Rawat. “When the deferment order had to be rescinded, the president had two choices, to go by the 2002 Act, which mandates the provisioning of a delimitation commission, or to authorise the EC to do the same. The president chose to form the commission because J&K has also been included in the process. The delimitation in J&K cannot be done by the EC.” Justice (retired) Kuldip Singh, who headed the 2002 delimitation commission, concurs with Rawat on this point, and even while admitting that Mendiratta is “right on technical grounds”, points out that “except the head of the commission, all other members are from the Election Commission”. Singh also points out that the orders of a delimitation commission cannot be challenged in court, and that could be the other reason the government has taken that route. “[Another] reason, why the Centre has opted for a commission, is that such exercises invite a lot of legal challenges,” says Rawat. Questioning the timing of the exercise, Congress also labours the point that the next national delimitation is due in 2026, which is not too far away. “Though it is long overdue in these four states, it is desirable that the exercise is conducted on the basis of the latest Census. As the next population census is due in 2021, the delimitation exercise in our states should be taken up after that,” says Pradyut Bordoloi, Congress Lok Sabha MP from Assam. Two Assam residents have also filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the authorities to defer the delimitation process until the end of Census 2021, “so that the most recent population figures are available”.The Supreme Court has sought responses from the Centre and the Assam government on the plea, which also maintains that due to opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, and apprehensions about the published NRC (National Register of Citizens) in Assam, the situation in the state was so volatile that it had had to be declared a ‘disturbed area’ for six months, beginning August 28, 2019. And though the NRC, published in August 2019, has been hotly contested, there is still no clarity on the fate of those left out of the list.The BJP-led state government has claimed that the delimitation exercise is needed to protect the interests of the indigenous people of the state. “The delimitation must be carried out, so that 110 out of 126 (assembly) seats are for the indigenous people of the state,” says Assam finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. His pitch, however, is dismissed even by organisations like the Prabajan Virodhi Manch (PVM), which was created to fight the illegal influx of Bangladeshis into the state and to protect the interests of the indigenous people. “The BJP-AGP alliance is not confident of retaining the indigenous vote, and this exercise will help them reduce the number of seats where the indigenes are in a majority. This is being done to take advantage of the illegal Hindu Bangladeshi immigrants legalised by the CAA,” says Upamanyu Hazarika, a Supreme Court lawyer and convenor of PVM.In Manipur, Congress leaders have expressed apprehensions that the state’s valley districts would be disadvantaged in terms of the number of seats if the assembly constituencies were to be re-drawn. The fear stems from ‘unusually high growth’ in the population of some hill districts, which many see as a major discrepancy in Census data. In J&K, the National Conference has rejected the delimitation process, as the party is unwilling to accept the conversion of Jammu and Kashmir into a Union territory to begin with (which has necessitated the exercise). The NC says that according to the J&K Constitution, the constituencies of the erstwhile state were to have been delimited in 2026, with the rest of the country.Published By: Iram Ara IbrahimPublished On: Aug 1, 2020--- ENDS ---

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Delimitation the boundary dispute at home

Assembly elections are due in Assam next year and opposition parties see this as a pre-election manoeuvre. The constitutional validity of the move has also been questioned.

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