Hyderabad: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government will reintroduce the Delimitation Bill with an explicit provision guaranteeing a 50 per cent proportional increase in seats across all states, key ally and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said, offering the first public confirmation from within the ruling coalition of its intent to revive the stalled legislative package.
In an interview to the Economic Times, Naidu, whose Telugu Desam Party (TDP) lends crucial support of 16 MPs to the NDA, also said the government would move simultaneously on women’s reservation. “The NDA government will bring the Delimitation Bill and introduce women’s reservation soon. It is the need of the hour if we want to introduce reservation of women in politics. This has my full support,” he said.
The government had convened a special session of Parliament in April and introduced the Constitution (131st Amendment Bill) 2026, which sought to raise Lok Sabha seats from 543 to 850 and tie the delimitation exercise to the 2011 Census. The bills were defeated after the government fell short of the two-thirds majority required for constitutional amendments.
The original bill drew sharp criticism from Opposition parties, which flagged the absence of an explicit guarantee that the proportional share of seats for each state would remain unchanged after the expansion.
50 per cent increase in seats for all state: Naidu
Naidu dismissed that criticism. “The intention of the government was absolutely clear from the beginning. The government stated it on the floor of the House that there will be 50 per cent increase of seats across the states and the proportion of seats will not change. There was only a matter of omission from the text of the Bill. The Opposition unnecessarily made it an issue,” he said.
Naidu expressed confidence that the revised bills would clear Parliament, pointing to shifting political equations. “The political circumstances have changed in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. I think it will be easy to push the legislations now,” he said.
The Trinamool Congress has since seen a split, with 20 MPs breaking away. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), whose central concern had been that southern states would be penalised for successfully implementing family planning measures, is expected to find its objections addressed by the explicit 50 per cent proportional increase provision now set to be written into the Bill.
Naidu also reached back to his own role in the last major delimitation freeze, drawing a parallel with the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government’s 2001 decision.
“I was also responsible for then Prime Minister Vajpayee freezing the number of seats in 2001. I told the Prime Minister that population is declining in South India so he should not link it to the latest Census because southern states will be punished. He accepted that the exercise should be linked to 1971 Census and froze the seats till after 2026. But now we need to address this problem again,” he told ET.
