TMC split, DMK-Congress divorce: New Delimitation path opens up for BJP

On April 18, chastened by the defeat of the Constitution 131st Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha a day earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the country in his televised address, “We will remove every obstacle in the path of women’s reservation."

The Opposition’s INDIA bloc, which had tasted its first major success in Parliament in over a decade, was quick to gloat.

Two months later, the Trinamool Congress is imploding. The AAP has lost seven of its 10 Rajya Sabha MPs to the BJP. The DMK has divorced the INDIA bloc. All this amid speculation that the Centre is drafting a new version of the Bill it had failed to get through Parliament in April.

The Bill, which received 298 votes of the BJP-led NDA MPs against the required 362 votes, was, of course, never just about operationalising women’s reservation in Lok Sabha and state assemblies. It was, as the Opposition repeatedly asserted, a subterfuge to change both the composition of the Lok Sabha and the character of constituencies through nationwide gerrymandering.

Monsoon session of Parliament

As the monsoon session of Parliament approaches, the decision of 20 Trinamool Congress MPs to merge with the obscure Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) and extend support to the NDA, is now, perhaps, to be seen in the context of Modi’s April 18 speech.

With the rebel Trinamool MPs on its side, the NDA’s legislative strength in the Lok Sabha now stands at 318 MPs. The figure may still seem way short of the two-thirds majority mark – currently pegged at 360 MPs due to three vacancies in the Lower House – required to pass any amendment to the Constitution for altering the Lok Sabha’s composition. It is, however, a significant increase from the 298 votes that the NDA had in its corner on April 17.

Also Read: Why delimitation Bills appear more ominous than originally thought

More importantly, if sources at the Centre are to be believed, this leap coincides with political shenanigans that are now well underway in an effort to manufacture a majority that may still evade the NDA on the floor of Parliament but should suffice the BJP’s bid to get a constitution amendment passed.

Though there has been no official word from the Modi government yet on rebooting the Constitution 131st Amendment Bill, BJP sources say preparatory work on a draft legislation, “with some key changes from the April version”, is currently on. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, whose TDP is a key NDA constituent, has practically confirmed that a new piece of legislation is on the anvil.

New opportunity with DMK

Given that despite support from 20 Trinamool rebels, the Centre is still 42 votes short of getting a Constitution amendment passed in the Lok Sabha, sources say the BJP realises that the key to fulfilling its agenda may lie, to an extent, with MK Stalin’s DMK.

Back in April, the DMK’s 22 MPs in the Lok Sabha were among the most vociferous protestors against the Centre’s bid to reconfigure the strength of the Lower House from the present 545 MPs to a proposed 850 MPs.

The DMK’s resistance to the Bill lay in two principal arguments. First, the DMK believed the Bill would push southern states like Tamil Nadu to the fringes of parliamentary relevance while granting the Hindi-belt states a near veto-like numerical strength in the Lok Sabha. Second, much of what Union Home Minister Amit Shah was promising at the time (including a flat 50 per cent hike in seats of all states to retain their existing proportionate share in Lok Sabha seats) was not explicitly written in the Bill.

The government, it is learnt, is not averse to tweaking the Census year for revising the Lok Sabha seat-count if doing so gets the DMK on its side.

On April 16, during an election campaign, Stalin had asserted that while his party is “not opposed to delimitation”, it demanded Modi’s “written assurance” that “delimitation will be drafted based on the 1971 Census” and that “the same draft will be followed from 2026 for 30 years”.

Also Read: Delimitation: Govt proposes to increase Lok Sabha seats to 850

This is where the BJP, say party insiders, senses an opportunity to make a fresh overture to Stalin; cushioned additionally with a chance to scorch the Congress which had, in the immediate aftermath of the DMK’s Tamil Nadu poll loss, dumped the long-loyal southern ally to partner with the victorious Joseph Vijay’s TVK.

The government, it is learnt, is not averse to tweaking the Census year for revising the Lok Sabha seat-count if doing so gets the DMK on its side. It may even pitch that delimitation for Lok Sabha and the corresponding exercise for state assemblies may be based on data sets from the 1971 and 2011 Census, respectively. The last delimitation for state assemblies was conducted based on the 2001 Census figures.

If the DMK remains adamant on opposing any delimitation formula proposed by the Centre, attempts could be made to convince Stalin, say BJP sources, to instruct his party’s MPs to “protest on the floor of the House during the discussion on the legislation but walk out or abstain when it is put to vote”.

Significance of 2027 Census

The BJP’s negotiators are expected to stress on Stalin that his refusal to play ball with the Centre will only put Tamil Nadu and the wider South at a greater disadvantage than what he perceived from the Constitution 131st Amendment Bill.

This is so because the constitutional freeze on delimitation, in force since 1976, will end automatically the moment the 2027 Census is published. If the Centre’s bid to alter the delimitation formula doesn’t pass Parliament now, the fresh delimitation exercise triggered by the publication of the 2027 Census will, per the current constitutional scheme, be based “only on the latest population figures”, insist government sources.

Also Read: Will women’s quota stall if Centre’s amendment Bill falls in Parliament?

The BJP argues that in such a scenario, the proportionate share in Lok Sabha of southern states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, which have successfully controlled their populations, will be far less than northern states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar; an eventuality that the Centre says it wants to avert.

If the DMK falls for the BJP’s sales pitch, its 22 MPs would push the NDA’s collective seat tally (including the 20 Trinamool rebels) to 340, which would be just 20 votes shy of the current two-thirds mark.

If DMK MPs abstain from voting

The BJP, however, realises that the DMK, despite its bitter separation from the Congress since the Tamil Nadu election loss, may still not risk being seen on the same side as the saffron front, for doing so could swiftly erode its electoral base further ahead of the 2029 Lok Sabha elections. As such, BJP sources say, Stalin may be urged to instruct his MPs to abstain from the vote.

If all 22 DMK MPs abstain, the two-thirds mark in Lok Sabha would fall from the current 360 to 345; a figure the BJP thinks is “reachable”. A strategy, par for the course whenever the BJP is confronted by such situations, is also in the works to help the government cross the final lap of 20-25 votes, say BJP sources.

Also Read: Three grounds on which delimitation laws may be challenged in court

The Centre, sources say, has its eyes set on MPs from Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena-UBT, Sharad Pawar’s NCP-SP, and the AAP; albeit with different plans for each. The three parties collectively constitute a bloc of 20 MPs.

NDA's plans to get the numbers in LS

A glimpse of the party’s plans for the SS-UBT was available on Sunday (June 14). Around the time the Trinamool rebels were in Delhi meeting Union minister Bhupendra Yadav to finalise their deal with the Centre, Thackeray had convened an “emergency meeting” of his party’s nine Lok Sabha MPs at his residence, Matoshree, in Mumbai.

The meeting at Matoshree was convened amid rumours that Maharashtra deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde, who had split the original Shiv Sena and walked away with its title and symbol in 2022, was planning an ‘Operation Tiger’ to now poach MPs from Thackeray’s party.

What sent the media into a tizzy were reports suggesting that at least five of Shiv Sena-UBT’s nine MPs did not turn up for the Matoshree meeting. Though senior party leader Sanjay Raut claimed that the five ‘absentee’ MPs had joined the meeting “virtually”, one of the MPs present at the meeting told The Federal that Thackeray stressed on the “need to be vigilant” against attempts to “break up the party once again”.

Also Read: Women's quota: Opposition has not averted delimitation danger, only deferred it

That Thackeray has now convened a second meeting on June 22, directing all party MPs and MLAs to be present, is seen as a sign of restiveness within the Shiv Sena-UBT leadership.

Little resistance from AAP, YSRCP, SAD

The case of NCP-SP is similar, though BJP sources claim that Pawar being “a pragmatic politician” is likely to “see merit in our argument instead of putting his party at risk once again”. The inherent threat in the BJP’s avowal of Pawar’s political acumen needn’t be spelt out.

Sources in the government expect no major resistance for support from the three AAP MPs in the Lok Sabha, and are also confident that four MPs of Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSRCP and Harsimrat Kaur Badal of the Shiromani Akali Dal “will continue to support our legislative agenda even if they are not part of the NDA”.

If these calculations by the government work out as planned, it believes it would have the numbers required to amend the Constitution for reconfiguring the Lok Sabha. The Delimitation Bill, which requires only a simple majority to be passed, would follow.

The Rajya Sabha picture

In the Rajya Sabha, the NDA commands support of 147 MPs against the 161-mark that would constitute a two-thirds majority in the 242-member House (excluding vacancies created last week by the resignation of former Trinamool members Sushmita Dev, Prakash Chik Baraik, and Sukhendu Sekhar Roy).

Also Read: Delimitation explained: Will 2029 Lok Sabha elections tilt against southern states?

The decision of seven AAP MPs to merge with the BJP in April had already bolstered the saffron party’s numbers in the House. Last week, the party also wrested an extra Rajya Sabha berth from Madhya Pradesh after the controversial disqualification of Congress nominee Meenakshi Natarajan.

On paper, the NDA may be 14 seats shy of a two-thirds majority in the Upper House, but the BJP is confident of narrowing that deficiency with the help of parties such as the YSRCP (7 MPs), the BRS (3 MPs) and the BSP (1 MP). Additionally, the party believes more MPs from the Trinamool Congress, which still has 10 members in the Rajya Sabha, could resign in the coming days or cross-vote in the government’s favour.

Opposition fighting a losing battle?

The Opposition, downcast and disjointed in the wake of the recent election results, the Trinamool’s implosion, and the DMK’s walkout from the INDIA bloc, may put up a raucous fight against the Centre’s attempts to radically alter the Lok Sabha’s composition.

Yet, shorn of the unity it displayed in April to stall the Constitution 131^st Amendment Bill, it may already be fighting a losing battle.

All that now remains to be seen is just how stridently the BJP wishes to bulldoze its legislative agenda – the amendment to hike Lok Sabha’s strength, pass a new delimitation law, or even conjoin parliamentary and assembly polls (the infamous One Nation, One Election) – through Parliament when it convenes for its monsoon session around mid-July.