Women’s reservations should be introduced without restrictions: Justice Hariparanthaman

From left, Nirmala Lakshman, Director, THG Publishing Private Limited; Justice D. Hari Paranthaman, former Judge of the Madras High Court; Ashok Vardhan Shetty, Ex-IAS and N. Ram, Director, The Hindu Group, at the launch of The Delimitation Debate on July 23. | Photo credit: Ragu R.

The freeze on delimitation of parliamentary constituencies should continue and reservation for women should be implemented immediately after delimitation and census, former Madras High Court judge D. Hariparanthaman (retd) said on Thursday (July 23, 2026).

Launching a book, The Delimitation Debate: The Union and its Units, published by The Hindu Group at its Chennai headquarters, the former judge warned that increasing the number of seats in the Lok Sabha would impede meaningful action in the House.

“The problem with increasing the numbers is that they can’t have negotiations,” he said. Furthermore, if the increase is based on population, the southern states will lose their corresponding representation in the Lok Sabha. This would penalize southern states for having implemented a national population policy well. “When we consider other democracies, 543 is a good number in itself,” he said.

Justice Hariparanthaman also sought fair representation of all states in the Rajya Sabha, similar to the US Senate model.

K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty, a former IAS officer and member of the High-Level Committee on Centre-State Relations set up by the Tamil Nadu government, said Article 329(a) places the Delimitation Commission’s proposals in a constitutional “black box”, insulating them from executive, parliamentary and judicial scrutiny.

The commission consists of a former judge of the Supreme Court as chairman, the chief election commissioner or candidate and the state election commissioner of the respective state. “This is dangerous and must be corrected. In Japan and Germany, delimitation commissions advise, but legislators pass delimitation legislation,” he said.

Mr. Shetty suggested the introduction of the “dialogue model” implemented in Canada, where proposals from the delimitation commission are discussed by a parliamentary subcommittee and comments are sent back to the commission for clarification. To improve representation in both chambers, the Rajya Sabha or the House of States may be redesigned along the lines of the US Senate, while a degressive system of proportionality may be introduced for the Lok Sabha, as practiced in Brazil, to reduce the disparity between more populous states and smaller states. Delimitation should be frozen until all states fall within a narrow band of the national total fertility rate, he said.

N. Ram, Director, The Hindu Group Publishing Pvt. Ltd. she suggested that the ideas discussed in the book can be further distilled to make them accessible to all, which can then be translated into other languages.

Nirmala Lakshman, Publisher, The Hindu Group, and Suresh Nambath, Editor, The Hindu were also present.

R. Srinivasan, Head of Magazines and Special Publications, THG Publishing, said the title is the group’s 219th publication since the creation of the Special Publications vertical in 2017.

The book is a collection of 17 essays – preceded by an introduction – on delimitation, federalism, representation and census, and highlights how the lack of access to key data makes delimitation studies difficult in India. Authors include Ashok Lavasa, former Election Commissioner; SY Quraishi, former Chief Election Commissioner; GN Devy, linguist, cultural activist and literary critic; Zoya Hasan, Emeritus Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University; and Radha Kumar, former CEO, Delhi Policy Group.

Published – 23 Jul 2026 22:52 IST