Delimitation and Its Constitutional Framework

Delimitation is the process of redrawing the boundaries of parliamentary and assembly constituencies based on population data from a Census. Under Article 82, seats in the Lok Sabha must be readjusted after every Census. However, the total number of Lok Sabha seats (543) has been frozen at the 1971 Census level through successive constitutional amendments — the 42nd Amendment (1976) froze it until 2001, and the 84th Amendment (2001) extended the freeze to 2026. The 87th Amendment (2003) allowed only boundary redrawing without changing the total seat count per state. The freeze was originally driven by concerns that states that successfully controlled population growth (largely southern states) would be penalised in representation.