The nation is beginning to wake up to delimitation. As we stand in front of the new political map of the country and rub our eyes, it is natural that we ask questions of immediate concern, of how it would affect the timing of the Karnataka elections or the fate of parties in the next Lok Sabha elections. It is yet to sink in that the boundaries of every single assembly and parliamentary constituency have been drawn afresh after three decades and that the new boundaries are here to stay for the next three decades. Perhaps no one has noticed that the country has missed a major opportunity to attend to some of the major challenges that face our polity in the new century.

There was nothing wrong with the procedure. The Delimitation Commission (DC) — the fourth of its kind in our republic — was headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Kuldip Singh. The DC included one member of the election commission — earlier B.B. Tandon and then N. Gopalasamy — but was not subordinate even to the chief election commissioner. MPs and MLAs from each state had their say as associate members, but they did not have a vote in the exercise.

The final order, now in place for all but four states, is of course non-partisan. Though it took longer than its predecessors, the DC needs to be congratulated on completing a gigantic and incredibly complex exercise in a way that is free of any apparent political bias. They have underlined the wisdom of the makers of our Constitution in putting in place a mechanism to ensure that the delimitation of electoral boundaries in India is neither as blatantly partisan as it is in the US nor as out of step with the times as in the UK.

... contd.