Southern India is legitimately getting concerned about the impending delimitation exercise, on the basis of which the 19th Lok Sabha will likely be elected, at some point around 2029. Before we look at what the Tamil Nadu and Telangana chief ministers have said recently, let’s take a look at the timeline of the delimitation exercise and the possible numbers it will throw up. It’s almost certain that delimitation is going to be based on the demographics revealed by the next census. Unfortunately, of course, the current regime has deferred the decadal exercise inordinately and egregiously because it always fears clear numbers, which make it more difficult to muddy the waters with all kinds of untruths. The census exercise was supposed to begin in 2020 to meet the 2021 timeline. It was understandably delayed then, but protracting the delay for almost four more years smacks of both incompetence and nefarious intentions.

Now, however, the Union government is talking about holding the exercise quickly, beginning this year and ending in 2026, when the headline numbers will become available. Delimitation will happen on the basis of these demographics by 2028. Assuming this dispensation survives till then, the new Lok Sabha will have a new look. Some projections have been made on the basis of numbers produced by other agencies. For one, the strength of the Lok Sabha is expected to rise from 543 to 753 seats. Among these, Andhra Pradesh (28), Karnataka (36), Tamil Nadu (41) and Telangana (20) will account for 125 seats. Kerala could lose one seat, going down to 19.

Together, then, the south will have 144 seats, which works out to about 19 per cent. In the outgoing Lok Sabha, these numbers were a total of 129 out of 543, which works out to almost 24 per cent. So, clearly, the southern states, as a collectivity, will lose some clout in Parliament. It would be difficult to penalise Kerala in absolute terms, so, one imagines, some algorithm will be worked out to redress this. On the other hand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh have 149 seats in the current Parliament, which works out to around 27 per cent. Their seats will go up to 245, or about 33 per cent; that’s a third. That’s part of what Tamil Nadu and Telangana Chief Ministers MK Stalin and Revanth Reddy have been complaining about – the patent unjustifiability of penalising the south for successfully implementing birth-control measures, while the Hindi heartland gets rewarded for failing to do so. Alongside, Stalin has also made a very interesting point about language: Hindi imperialism not only threatens the languages of the south, east and west, but it is also killing the rich linguistic diversity of the northern Indian hinterland.