Following a lengthy meeting of a Group of Ministers chaired by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee earlier this week, the Government appears to have put implementation of the Delimitation Commission report on a fast-track.

The GoM meeting took place days after the Supreme Court stayed the conduct of the delimitation operation in four Northeastern states and also questioned the delay in implementation of delimitation in 25 states for which notifications have already been issued by the Commission.

Two decisions appear to have been taken at the GoM’s last meeting. One, that the President should be sent the consolidated delimitation report for final notification (with Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur) and despite the 25 notifications being placed in Parliament, Members of Parliament needed to be further sensitised on the result of the delimitation exercise in their individual constituencies.

The Law Ministry, has, therefore, been asked to prepare around a 1,000 of the notifications of each of the delimited 25 states, to be shortly placed in Parliament. The idea, Law Ministry officials say, is to allow MPs to see the changes made by the Delimitation Commission, since the status (reserved, general) as well as size of the electorate has been altered in a majority of the Lok Sabha constituencies.

Law Ministry officials said the indication was for them to draw up the final draft for presidential notification only once the process was completed in the four Northeastern states. It is at this stage that the Government will also have to recommend a date from which the presidential notification will come into effect throughout the country.

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