The Lok Sabha on Tuesday passed the Constitution Amendment Bill seeking to extend the current freeze on undertaking fresh delimitation of Lok Sabha and assembly constituencies upto 2026.
The bill was approved in a division with 297 voting in favour and two against. Replying to a three-hour discussion, law minister Arun Jaitley said that the amendment was brought as a motivational measure to enable the state governments to pursue the agenda for population stabilisation.
Keeping in view the progress of family planning programmes in different parts of the country, he said that the government, as part of the national population policy strategy, had decided to bring this amendment.
Jaitely said that the government has also decided to undertake readjustment and rationalisation of territorial constituencies in the states, without altering the number of seats allotted to each state in the House of People and legislative assemblies including the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes constituencies on the basis of the population ascertained at the census for 1991, so as to remove the imbalance caused due to uneven growth of population or electorate. Bureau Report