Ideas of India Shruti Rajagopalan and Milan Vaishnav on India's Delimitation Dilemma
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May 6, 2026 
Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at Carnegie and host of Grand Tamasha, unpacks India’s delimitation dilemmas. They explain how seat apportionment and the 1971 freeze work. Conversations cover proposed reforms, who would gain or lose seats, the fiscal bargain behind the politics, and options like expansion, reapportionment, and Rajya Sabha reform.
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Why The 1971 Census Still Decides Seats
- The 1976 freeze pegged seat apportionment to the 1971 census as a 25-year political compromise to allow fertility convergence across states.
- Shruti Rajagopalan traces how the freeze persisted and split treatment: interstate freeze to 1971, intrastate delimitation used 2001.
India's Lower House Is Surprisingly Malapportioned
- India is relatively highly malapportioned among federations in its lower house with an 8% Samuel-Snyder index value.
- Milan notes votes in southern states carry more weight; Kerala MPs represent roughly half the population of Bihar MPs per seat.
What The 131st Amendment Would Have Changed
- The failed 131st Amendment sought to raise the Lok Sabha cap to 850 and shift the delimitation trigger from automatic post-census to parliamentary discretion.
- Shruti explains the bill would have let a Delimitation Commission choose which census to use, changing who decides reapportionment.