NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be laying the foundation stone of the new Parliament building on December 10. The new building would be a four-storey structure with a seating capacity of 1,224 and cost Rs 970 crore. It would replace the existing colonial structure which would be completing a hundred years in 2021.

Leave aside questions of whether this is the right time for Modi’s ambitious and expensive Central Vista revamp, which aims to reconstruct the heart of India’s government in New Delhi to reflect his time in power. Never mind also the allegations of impropriety in awarding the contract for a new Parliament to the Tata Group, which were later withdrawn by a rival corporate house.

Full house

One key detail about the new building, as PTI reported: “In the new building, the Lok Sabha chamber will have a seating capacity for 888 members, while Rajya Sabha will have 384 seats for the upper house members…At present, Lok Sabha has a sanctioned strength of 543 members and Rajya Sabha of 245.”

If the Lok Sabha only has 543 members, why does its new chamber need 888 seats?

One answer, presumably, is the intention to allow the Lok Sabha to also host a full joint session, when members of both India’s upper and lower houses of Parliament sit together. This is done on special occasions, either to mark a significant date or in the case of an address by a visiting dignitary.

But joint sittings can also be called when there is a deadlock in terms of legislation between the two houses, usually allowing the party or coalition with larger support in the Lok Sabha to pass a bill – as has happened on less than a handful of occasions in the past.

The more relevant reason for the Lok Sabha to have more seats is simply that there are likely to be more Lok Sabha members.

The Indian Constitution permits a maximum of 552 Lok Sabha MPs. But the state-wise allocation of seats was supposed to be adjusted every 10 years based on population changes, in such a way that each Member of Parliament would represent roughly an equal number of people, not counting Union Territories or particularly small states.

That represented a problem particularly in the 1970s, when population control was an official objective of the Indian government. If seats were re-allocated as per the set formula, states where the population grew faster would be rewarded with more Lok Sabha MPs, while states that were successfully implementing the state policy of population control would effectively be penalised and lose seats.

‘Malapportionment’

To address this, the number of seats was frozen in 1976, with the aim of revisiting the matter after the 2001 census. In 2002, the delimitation exercise – the term used for re-evaluating constituencies – was again pushed off to 2026, now fast approaching, though it might have to wait until after the 2031 census.

From a democratic point of view, this is problematic, since it means that every Member of Parliament from Tamil Nadu represents on average 1.8 million citizens, whereas an MP From Uttar Pradesh represents 3 million – effectively increasing or decreasing the value of a vote depending on where you live.

Side note: Fascinatingly, Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hintson found that despite 1.2 million fewer citizens on average per constituency in Tamil Nadu than Uttar Pradesh, the number of registered voters were about the same. Even more remarkably, more voters actually voted per constituency in Tamil Nadu than Uttar Pradesh.

However, from a political economy point of view, this postponement of the problem for 50 years is also challenging because, whenever the numbers are adjusted they will lead to a remarkable shift in power – which broadly breaks down on a North/South axis.

This table, from an analysis by Vaishnav and Hintson in 2019 shows you just how much things would change.