Lok Sabha

A House frozen in 1971

India’s lower house is elected by over 900 million voters, yet its shape was set half a century ago. Article 81 of the Constitution requires Lok Sabha seats to be allotted so that each state’s seat-to-population ratio is as equal as possible — but an amendment to the Constitution’s definition of “population” now fixes it at the 1971 Census, “until the first Census taken after 2026.” Delimitation — the redrawing of constituency boundaries to reflect population change — was first suspended in 1976, during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, until 2001, and then extended again to 2026.

The freeze was political, not technical. Applied honestly, equal ratios would have rewarded states with fast population growth and punished those that embraced family planning — the southern states that promoted it faced losing seats. To allay those fears, delimitation was put in cold storage. The last delimitation exercise (July 2002 to May 31, 2008), run on the 2001 Census, only readjusted boundaries and reworked SC/ST-reserved seats; the total stayed 543. The result is a standing argument: with seats unchanged since the 1970s, fast-growing northern states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh are underrepresented, while southern states would lose seats under a fresh count.

The House itself

The Lok Sabha — the House of the People — is India’s directly-elected lower house. Article 81 caps it at 550 elected members, of whom no more than 20 represent Union Territories; at present 543 are elected, 530 from the states and the rest from the UTs. Its term is five years unless dissolved earlier. The first House, constituted in 1952 after the 1951–52 general elections, had 497 members — 489 elected — and the Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru won 364 of them.

The House’s size moved with the country’s map before the freeze: the 1956 state reorganization (14 states, six Union Territories) brought a 500-for-states plus 20-for-UTs formula and a 503-member second House in 1957; Haryana’s 1966 creation and Goa’s 1961 liberation each shifted the composition.

Its electoral history tracks independent India’s: Congress dominance through 1971 (342 of 518 on “Garibi Hatao”); the 1977 Janata rout (295 to Congress’s 154) after the Emergency, giving India its first non-Congress government under Morarji Desai; the 1984 sympathy wave after Indira Gandhi’s assassination (415 of 542); the hung House of 1989; Congress’s 1991 return with 232 of 543 as the BJP rose to 120; and the fractured mandates of 1996 and 1998.

What this profile does not claim

• Election results after 1998; later general elections were not verified from fully-read sources.
• The current status of the two nominated Anglo-Indian seats under Article 331.
• That the freeze will end after 2026; the sources report the legal position, not a prediction.