Think of India’s Parliament like the board of a very large company. Different departments (states) bring in different revenue and have different headcounts. If board seats are handed out only by headcount, the department that earns the most revenue but employs fewer people gets fewer seats — and less say in how the money is spent. Fair?
That is the argument in a recent op-ed by a sitting MP and academic, challenging the foundational assumption of India’s upcoming delimitation: that population should be the only factor in deciding Lok Sabha seats per state.
The core data: Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana together contribute ~20% of all Union tax revenue (direct + indirect); Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh together ~6%. Five years ago the southern share was 18% and the northern 7% — the gap is widening. Now flip to population: those three southern states have ~13% (down from 14% a decade ago, heading to 12%); the three northern states have ~33% (up from 32%, heading to 34%). Revenue share rising, population share falling — the two move in opposite directions.
The central claim: if Parliament’s primary job is overseeing how money is raised (taxes) and spent (welfare), why should a state’s share of representation track only population and ignore its share of the national tax pool? The author is careful — every citizen’s vote stays exactly equal; this is about a state’s collective weight in the federation, where headcount alone may not be the right measure.
There is also a technological argument. In 1787, an American representative physically walked through villages — a natural limit on how many people one person could serve. In 2026, an MP’s message reaches one lakh or ten lakh people at the same cost. Technology has dissolved the practical burden of larger constituencies, weakening the old “manageable size” rationale. The author proposes a composite formula — population plus economic contribution — mirroring how the Finance Commission already uses a multi-parameter formula for tax devolution.