India holds the largest democratic exercise in the world, and the units of representation in its lower
house are correspondingly outsized1,2. The median Lok Sabha parliamentary constituency (PC)
registered 1.82 million electors in 2024; the largest crossed 3.2 million. Such scale presses on the
logistics of voting in ways rarely visible in comparative-democracy statistics3,4: queues at
metropolitan polling booths can run several hours, while small rural and tribal-hill PCs are essentially uncongested. The state-wise allocation of Lok Sabha seats has been frozen at its 1971-Census numbers since the 42nd Constitutional Amendment of 1976, a freeze extended by the 84th
Amendment in 2001 to remain in force “until after the first census taken after 2026”5,6. The 2002
Delimitation Commission redrew within-state PC boundaries based on the 2001 Census (the redrawn
boundaries first took effect at the 2009 general election), but kept each state’s total seat count frozen.
The constitutionally mandated delimitation expected after the 2027 Census will be the first to
unfreeze state-wise allocation, redistributing roughly 281 new seats across 36 states and Union
Territories. The political question is which constituencies should be split, into how many parts, and
on what criterion.
