Overview
- At Stanford’s India Conference on Sunday, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor rejected talk of expanding the Lok Sabha to 850 members and warned it would hollow out debate.
- BJP MPs Tejasvi Surya and K. Annamalai urged prompt delimitation, which is the redrawing and reallocation of seats after a census, to restore closer links between voters and MPs.
- Surya said it is absurd to keep the house frozen at 543 seats based on old population benchmarks, citing today’s far larger electorate.
- Annamalai framed the exercise as a North–South bargain and said new census data could shift more seats to higher‑growth northern states.
- Tharoor backed one‑third reservation for women as a standalone step and said delimitation should wait for census results expected between 2027 and 2029, with a possible new political map nearer 2034.