SOURCE: SUNDAY GUARDIAN LIVE
With the formal approval for the construction of the new Parliament building coming from both the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change’s Expert Appraisal Committee and the Central Vista Committee, the Indian democratic setup has now also moved towards having a bigger Lok Sabha in terms of increased members which will lead to more representation of the voters in the House.
The new Parliament building will have a seating capacity of more than 1,300 members, including both the lower and the upper Houses. The appropriating of Lok Sabha seats was last done in 1977 on the basis of 1971 census and at that time, on an average, every Lok Sabha MP represented 10 lakh voters. However, that has changed massively and now, on an average, a MP represents 20-25 lakh people. A Lok Sabha MP of Bihar represents 25 lakh voters, while a MP from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh represents 30 lakh voters. As of today, the smallest five Lok Sabha seats have 8 lakh voters between them, while the largest five have almost 1.3 crore voters.`
Being aware that such disproportion will arise in the future, the Constitutional fathers had inserted Article 82 into the Constitution which stipulates for the reallocation of revised number of Lok Sabha seats after every census based on updated population figures. Until 1976, after every census, a Delimitation Commission was set up to carve out constituencies based on the latest census, as Article 82 had called for.
However, the Forty-Second Constitutional amendment enacted in 1976— which was brought during the Emergency period by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi—suspended the revision of seats until after the 2001 Census. Twenty six years later, in February 2002, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government delayed the reallocation further by passing the Eighty-Fourth Amendment and extending the freeze on delimitation until 2026.
Former President of India, Pranab Mukherjee in December 2019 had raised the issue of increasing the number of members in the lower House from 543 to 1000 in order to give adequate representation to the population of India.
If the relevant sections of the Constitution are not amended, the next delimitation of constituencies is likely to take place after the freeze ends in 2026 and will be based on the first census post the freeze that will take place in 2031. It is only after this that the number of seats in Parliament can be increased.
However, considering the brute number the government enjoys in the House and the ease with which it has been able to pass contentious bills in both the Houses, it will not be a surprise if the government brings in a constitutional amendment bill before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to increase the seats.
Constitutional amendments?
As per Article 368, the Parliament may amend any provision of the Constitution by bringing an amendment in either House of Parliament. It has to be passed in each House by a majority of the total membership of that House and by a majority of not less than two-thirds of the members of that House present and voting. The amendment is also required to be ratified by the Legislatures of not less than one-half of the states by resolutions before the Bill making provision for such amendment is presented to the President for assent.
How to strike a balance between states who did well in family planning and as a result have lower population, and those who didn’t
As on 2017, the total fertility rate of India was 2.2, which was nearing “Replacement level fertility”, which is considered 2.1.
Replacement level fertility is the total fertility rate—the average number of children born per woman—at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next, without migration.
However, not all states have equally contributed to this decreasing fertility rate of India—from 4-5 in 1981 to 2.2 today. The fertility rate of Bihar in 2017 was the highest- 3.2, followed by Uttar Pradesh 3.0 and other bigger states like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan—2.7 each.
This high fertility rate was somewhat negated by the strict family planning measures that have been taken by other states, especially the South Indian states. Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh had 1.6, Kerala, Telangana, Karnataka all had 1.7 fertility rate in 2017.
And this has been the case since the last many years- South Indian states have strictly implemented family planning, while the Northern, Hindi speaking states have followed the policy of “two is less- three is good-four is best”.
However, following the family planning policies has put South Indian states at a disadvantageous position when it comes to population-wise representation in the Lok Sabha, as they will fall behind the more populated states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh because these states have more people and hence will get more Lok Sabha seats. Any increase in seats based on population increase would reward those with high increases and penalise those with low increases. Hence, the worry about such a move has caused its repeated postponement. It is to be seen if PM Modi decides to ignore this factor and go ahead with a love that several states would oppose.
And it was to promote this very population stabilization and family planning and to allay the concerns of some of the states that Indira Gandhi, by bringing the 42nd amendment to the Constitution, had frozen the seat allocation on the basis of 1971 population figures.
And though the North states have been able to control their population growth, the same concerns that were put across by South Indian states in front of Indira Gandhi in 1976 would have to be handled by PM Narendra
Modi even today—a challenge that will need deft political maneuvering and convincing the stakeholders why more MPs are better for the country.
Delimitation exercise
The delimitation of constituencies in India, like in any other country, is done on the basis of the population and in India, a commission called the Delimitation Commission is tasked to do the job of carving out newer constituencies based on the population figures from the latest census.
In the past, India had four Delimitation Commissions—1952, 1963, 1973 and 2002 and the present number of seats in the Parliament is based on the Delimitation Commission notification in 2002 which carved out the present constituencies based on the 2001 census.
Experts at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in a piece (India’s Emerging Crisis of Representation) that was published in March 2019, using the calculations given by political scientist Alistair McMillan, who teaches at the University of Sheffield, UK, and is author of “Standing at the Margins: Representation and Electoral Reservation in India”, had stated that to have a proper representation of the total population in the Lok Sabha, India will need to have at least 848 representatives. Presently, the lower House of Parliament has around 545 members, which is minuscule in proportion to the present population of India.
Compare this to the other major parliaments. The British Parliament has about 630 (elected) members of the House of Commons representing less than 7 crore people, while the Singaporean Parliament which is also based on the Westminster Model, as followed in the UK and India, has 105 MPs representing less than 57 Lakh people.
The Australian Parliament which is officially known as the Federal
Parliament and represents a little more than 2.5 crore of the Australian population has 151 elected members in its House of Representatives. The United States has 435 elected representatives in its lower House, the House of Representatives elected from various constituencies carved out from the states in proportion to its population.
The new building
The Rs 922 crore new Parliament building being built by CPWD, that will have a maximum height of 42 metre spread over 65,000 square metre of built-up area on a 10.5 acre or 42,031 square metre plot, which will be built by demolishing close to 5,200 square meters of the existing structure, is expected to be completed before 15 August 2022, when India will be celebrating its 75th year of Independence. The building which is part of the Centre’s larger Central Vista project which includes a new Parliament house, a new Central secretariat complex for ministries, and new residences for the Prime Minister and the Vice President which will be completed by 2024, in total is spread across 3 km.
The construction of a new Parliament is part of the larger revamp of the entire 3-km Central Vista from Rashtrapati Bhavan till India Gate, proposed by the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry and its construction agency, the CPWD.
The Parliament building, which will be designed by a Gujarat-based architectural company, HCP Design, Planning and Management, will have two separate Houses—The Lok Sabha, The Rajya Sabha and an open courtyard around which will be constructed a lounge for Members of Parliament to interact with each other. Presently, this activity is generally done at the Central Hall of the Parliament, although the Central Hall was not developed for this purpose, but over the years it has been used by MPs to meet their colleagues.
Issues regarding the seating arrangements in the current Parliament building have also been by members at several occasions. Both the Houses of the Parliament have a congested seating arrangement at the present form, with each member of Parliament adjusting between a space of 40 cm by 50 cm. In comparison to this, the seating arrangement for the members in the Singaporean, Egyptian and the German Parliament is 60 by 60 cm.
Members from time to time have also raised issues about how they have to move in and move out in between debates when another member wants to be excused from the House, causing disruption and disturbances.
According to the new plan, each bench of the new Parliament would seat two members and each bench would also have a desk where members can place their files, note pads, laptops or iPads, unlike the current Parliament where only the first two rows have such an arrangement.
The building is also likely to have offices for each Member of Parliament along the periphery of the building. Presently, all the Members of Parliament do not have an office for themselves in the Parliament complex.
Interestingly, the shape of the new building is chosen to be a triangular shape, since this geometric form is considered sacred in all religions. The building would also have windows but each window in the entire complex would be different from each other in sizes and this according to the developers is being done to represent the diversity of the country.
The Parliament House would also be fitted with the newest and the latest technology which would manage the acoustics inside the House so that each member of the House is able to hear each other clearly during a course of the discussion or debate. A hi-tech language translation system is also likely to be put in place in the new building.
https://defencenewsofindia.com/india-prepares-for-new-parliament-more-members/
