Why is increasing the MPs strength in Lok Shaba through delimitation not the need of the hour?
By – Dr. Vigneswaran V.S.,
Assistant Professor ,Department of Environmental science and Engineering, SRM University – AP( Amaravati)
The Indian government plans to increase the number of members of parliament to 815, to decrease the population an MP represents in Lok Shaba, thereby ensuring citizens problems are resolved effectively. However, even with a current strength of 543 members, most of the members hardly get few minutes to voice out the issues faced by the people belonging to their constituency. Hence, increasing the strength by 50% (815 members) will only further reduce the span a member addresses in the Lok Shaba. Meanwhile, increasing the MPs strength in each state/union territories (UTs) by 50% might sound equal increase in members across all regions but our parliament runs on absolute majority. For instance, if the strength of the Lok Shaba increases to 815, the ratio of members between Lok Shaba and Rajya Shaba will fall from the current level of 2.2:1 to 3.3:1, thereby bring down the influence of Rajya Shaba members during joint parliamentary session. This may act as a way to bypass ordinary or financial bills to resolve legislative deadlock under Article 108.
Hence, rather than penalizing the southern states which adopted effective population control, the number of MPs in Lok Shaba should remain unchanged. Instead, the strength of legislative members in state assembly (MLA) can be increasedby decreasing the voter count per assembly constituency. As most of the day-to-day problems the citizen faces like drinking water, sanitation and law and order comes under states power, which can be resolved by MLAs itself, thereby promoting decentralization of power and offsetting MPs workload. This will also enable the central government to pass the women reservation bill without much hinderance. Thus, decentralizing the power to state government and local body representative is the need of the hour rather than increasing Lok Shaba strength. Even developed nations like United States of America has for not increased their parliament strength from 435 for about a century, despite increase in its population. On the other hand, nations like Denmark and Peru has decreased the strength of elected members over the years to ensure effective functioning of the parliament.
