One of the top items on the electoral reforms agenda, the bill will unfreeze the ban on redrawing and restructuring the contours of some of the larger Parliamentary constituencies in order to create more small ones.

But the haste with which the government plans to take up the bill is already raising the hackles of the opposition parties who suspect the BJP's reasons for redrawing the map smacks of political expediency.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Madanlal Khurana disagrees. ``It is not a new bill that the government is introducing. It has been hanging before Parliament for a long time. We are only reviving it'', he told The Indian Express.

Reminded that Parliament had frozen delimitation of constituencies till the next Census of India in 2001, Khurana reactedsaying, ``only if we get working on it now, will things get done by 2001''.

Confident that opposition parties will not cut down the bill, Khurana said the entire exercise, including the decision to table it in Parliament would be preceded by consultations with major political parties and an assessment of the kind of support that the bill would muster in Parliament.

``It is not the BJP that will re-draw the map'', he counters. Denying that the BJP will resort to jerry-mandering he said the government would entrust the task to a technical commission headed by a retired Supreme Court judge which would visit every part of the country before suggesting any changes.

The backdrop to the vociferous demands for delimitation of constituencies from across the political spectrum follows from the growth of the population. This growth has been on two counts: a quantum jump in the population since the last delimitation exercise in 1971 and the anomalous growth of the population in different constituencies.

In thecapital alone, Chandni Chowk constituency has less than 4 lakh voters, while the Outer Delhi constituency has more than 28 lakh voters though both are represented by a single MP each in the Lok Sabha. This means that the value of one vote in Outer Delhi is about one-seventh of that in Chandni Chowk.

In the early years after Independence, the job of delimitation was entrusted to an independent Commission and was based on the 1951 Census. Ten years later, yet another delimitation Commission set up after the third general elections in 1963, increased the size of the Lok Sabha from 481 to 490 seats.

The next Census in 1971, was followed by yet another delimitation exercise which completed its task in 1975, increasing the total number of elected seats in the Lok Sabha to its current strength of 543.

The standing guideline for the seat-population ratio was roughly the same for the entire country: a population of 10 lakh would be represented by one member of the Lok Sabha, with the arrangement to be reviewedafter each decennial census.

But the regular delimitation exercises after each census raised apprehensions among some states, and the Southern states in particular, that their family planning and population control success would reduce their representation to the Lok Sabha. The result: the 42nd Amendment passed by Parliament froze the population figure to that of the 1971 Census and delimitation was put on hold till 2001.

Meanwhile, the lowering of the voting age to 18, the tremendous increase in population and the intensive revision of electoral rolls just prior to the 1998 Lok Sabha elections have all contributed in pushing the number of registered voters to over 630 million from among a total population of 950 million.

With the Election Commission expecting candidates to stick to the poll expenditure limit of Rs 15 lakh, parties across the political spectrum feel the size of the constituency has to be rationalised.

The EC has also offered that it could part of any non-partisan technical body setup to go into the actual redrawing of the map. ``This would prevent any attempts at jerry-mandering'', according to Chief Election Commissioner MS Gill.