EAC-PM recommends targeted allocation of seats for delimitation, shows model allowing 50% increase for all major states

The Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC-PM) has recommended multi-factor criteria for “targeted” seat distribution during India’s next parliamentary constituency delimitation in a new working paper that goes beyond population distribution and maintains the current share of Lok Sabha seats for all major states.

The model developed by the EAC-PM based on these criteria means that LS seats in Kerala, for example, will increase from 20 to 30, TN seats will increase from 39 to 59 and Uttar Pradesh seats will increase from 80 to 120 – roughly in line with what the Union government proposed in April when it introduced delimitation bills but passed them in Parliament.

Applying these criteria in the EAC-PM model further suggested doubling the number of LS seats in smaller states and union territories such as Mizoram, Puducherry, Sikkim, Ladakh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Nagaland, Chandigarh and Lakshadweep.

Out of the existing 543 seats, the EAC-PM model proposes a distribution of a total of 170 seats, of which 59 constituencies were recommended for a two-way distribution and 111 for a three-way distribution.

A house with more than 800 seats

The model results in an increase in the size of the Lok Sabha to 824 seats. According to the Council, this will lead to the total seat share of southern states (Telangana, AP, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu) in the Lok Sabha reaching 23.6% compared to the current 23.7%. Meanwhile, the share of the six most populous northern states (Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Bihar and Maharashtra) will reach 45.2% under the model, up from the current share of 45.6%.

The existing ratio of seats per state was frozen based on population figures from the 1971 census. The freeze was introduced by a constitutional amendment in 1976.

While the EAC-PM notes that the next delimitation procedure is consequential as it would be the first time since then that the number of seats per state could be changed, it does not comment on the underlying principle for essentially maintaining the existing share of states’ seats other than that their model was designed to “respect” the 50% expansion per state.

The working paper, authored by EAC-PM member Shamika Ravi and Indian Statistical Institute’s Mudit Kapoor, said its main objective was to answer the following questions: “Which constituencies should be divided, into how many parts and according to what criteria”?

In doing so, the EAC-PM said it collected a dataset of LS seat elections from 2009 to 2024 to estimate the “statistical relationship” between voter turnout, constituency size and five constituency compositional features (these include urban share, SC share, ST share, linguistic polarization and linguistic diversity).

The paper added that this estimated statistical relationship was then used to develop “a turnout-maximizing delineation plan that divides the largest turnout-responsive constituencies into two or three.”

Criteria for the distribution of constituencies

The EAC-PM further recommends a “targeted criterion” for the division of constituencies instead of a “uniform one” in a policy note attached to the working paper, adding that “the Delimitation Commission, if constituted after the 2027 census”, should “treat the common demographic and linguistic profile of a candidate constituency as the division itself into its size and not as a division of its size”.

The council further recommended that the Election Commission of India and the Department of Statistics time the next delimitation exercise with “a new round of booth rationalization” and the government should ensure that the “2027 census tables and gender-disaggregated electoral statistics” are released as scheduled.

He added that model calculations in the working paper showed that even after the division of constituencies, there remained a residual gap in the percentage of female voter turnout in urban areas and therefore recommended the EC to plan delimitation with measures such as women-only polling stations, evening polling hours for working women in cities, transport links to polling stations and updating the women-centric voter list.

6 key findings

In their policy working paper, Ms Ravi and Mr Kapoor further break down their study into six key findings. These deal with the relationship of various factors to electoral participation in constituencies. In one of its findings, the paper claimed that their proposed model was likely to lead to an overall increase in voter turnout across the country of up to 2.3% in the next general election.

However, the authors underlined this by noting that the gain in voter turnout would depend on which statistical specification was chosen, adding that the model was meant to answer what happens when the electorate shrinks while maintaining its composition.

The report also says that between 2009 and 2024, the gap between voter turnout in the smallest and largest precincts halved. “Small constituencies will descriptively outperform large ones in 2024 because they have turnout-friendly compositional features (high ST share, low urban share, moderate linguistic polarization) and not because they are small per se,” the report concluded.

Furthermore, what the paper’s authors describe as five “compositional features” of a constituency and their interactions with constituency size and voter turnout showed that these reorganized over time in ways that were not mutually exclusive. In addition, the study added that the urban share of voters was “the single largest compositional feature” associated with female turnout, adding: “Women in all-urban constituencies today vote about 5% less than rural women in every constituency size, compared to a difference of about 2% for men.”

In other caveats to its study and findings, the EAC-PM added that the demographic and linguistic measures used for the study were based on the 2011 census and therefore the 2027 census data would need to be updated to make the recalculation more reliable.

Published – 10 Jun 2026 22:01 IST