Chennai: Union home minister Amit Shah‘s explanation that Tamil Nadu would not lose any parliamentary constituencies due to delimitation has failed to give clarity, DMK deputy general secretary A Raja has said.
Soon after Shah’s speech in Coimbatore on Wednesday, Raja met journalists in Chennai and demanded that the BJP clarify if the pro-rata basis on which the parliamentary constituencies will be formed during the delimitation exercise will be based on the existing number of constituencies or on population.
“There is no answer whether the pro-rata basis mentioned by Shah referred to existing constituencies or population,” he said. Raja said BJP state president K Annamalai while explaining Shah’s speech said the parliamentary constituencies would be proportionately increased based on the number of existing constituencies.
“But Shah did not say so,” Raja said.
“Even if Tamil Nadu’s parliamentary constituencies are not reduced, it would be an injustice if the number of constituencies in northern states were increased based on their population,” he told reporters.
If this was the case, then it would mean that TN was being punished for following the Union govt’s direction on population control, he said. Raja said TN would stand to lose if the delimitation exercise was done based on the current population.
Pro-rata would also be problematic if it was done based on the number of existing constituencies.
Hence, the pro rata increase of Lok Sabha seats should be based on the 1971 population census, he said.