Profile
Settings
Refer your friends
Sign out
The Delimitation Commission, also known as the Indian Boundary Commission, is a body established by the Indian government under the provisions of the Delimitation Commission Act. The commission’s principal responsibility is to redraw the boundaries of various assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies based on the results of a recent census. During this experiment, the representations from each state are not modified. The number of SC and ST seats in a state, on the other end, is modified in accordance with the census. Under the rules of the Delimitation Act of 2002, the current delimitation of seats was done on the basis of the 2001 census.
The Commission is a powerful and autonomous organisation whose decisions are not subject to legal review. The orders are presented to the Lok Sabha as well as the state legislatures. Modifications, on the other hand, are not permitted.
History of Delimitation:
In India, the Delimitation Commission was constituted for the first time in 1952. Following that, Delimitation Commissions were established in 1963, 1973, and 2002. In India, no delimitation commission was established after 2002.
On July 12, 2002, the Delimitation Commission was established under the supervision of Justice Kuldeep Singh, a retired Supreme Court of India judge.
The commission submitted its recommendations to the centre in 2007, but the government ignored them. However, after the Supreme Court intervened, the proposals were approved in 2008. On the basis of the 2001 census, the Commission delineated the state’s constituencies. The central government can set up a delimitation panel every ten years, according to Article 82 of the Indian Constitution.
Requirement of the delimitation in the Jammu and Kashmir State:
According to the 2011 census, the Jammu division has a population of almost 54 lakh people, accounting for 43% of the state’s total population. Jammu division covers 26,200 sq km or about 26% of the state’s land area, and it has 37 seats in the state assembly.
Kashmir division has a population of 68.88 lakh people, accounting for 55% of the total population of the state. The Kashmir division covers around 16% of the total land area of the state. Only 46 legislators are elected from this district.
According to the data, one MLA is elected every 349 square kilometres in Kashmir, while one MLA represents 710 square kilometres in Jammu.
Ladakh division, which covers 58.33% of the state’s land, has only four assembly members. According to the figures above, the distribution of assembly seats in Jammu & Kashmir is unbalanced. The federal government is working to close the disparity in seat distribution.
Conclusion:
The act of redrawing the boundaries of an Assembly or Lok Sabha seat to mirror changes in the population through time is termed delimitation. This process is overseen by a Delimitation Commission, whose decisions are binding and cannot be challenged in court. The goal is to redraw boundaries (based on the most recent Census data) in such a way that the population of all seats is as uniform as possible throughout the state. The process may result in a change in the number of seats in a state, in addition to changing the boundaries of a constituency.
