Back on January 4, 1949, the Constituent Assembly of India met in the Constitution Hall to discuss Article 67, which dealt with the composition of the House of the People (Lok Sabha). The debates that day directly addressed issues such as delimitation and the choice between proportional representation (PR) and the proposed territorial, single-member constituency system (what became India’s First-Past-The-Post, or FPTP, model).
As the country once again discusses delimitation—and as the government pushes to remove the cap on the maximum number of Lok Sabha members, potentially increasing its strength from the current 550 to 850—we look at some interesting parallels from the day when the Constituent Assembly was grappling with the same questions back in 1949.
The RSS question
Today, a coalition government led by an RSS pracharak-turned-politician, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is pushing for amendments in the Parliament. Back in 1949, when the Constituent Assembly convened to discuss similar matters, there were worries that RSS workers would disturb the proceedings. When the Constituent Assembly met in the Constitution Hall at 10am, the vice president of the assembly, H.C. Mukherjee—a distinguished educationist and a Christian leader from Bengal—was in the chair. Mukherjee had some important information to share and cautionary advice for the members of the assembly before beginning the proceedings. He told the assembly that there was information that members of the RSS would try to secure entrance into the lobbies and galleries in order to create disturbance. “Fortunately, this was prevented. May I request honourable Members to issue visitors’ cards for those only who are personally known to them in order that we may proceed with our business without any interruption?” he said.
The RSS found another mention as the assembly proceedings progressed. Kazi Syed Karimuddin, who was elected to the Constituent Assembly from the Central Provinces through a Muslim League ticket, made that mention while arguing against the single-member constituency electoral system, which he called “very defective”. He proposed replacing the single-member territorial constituencies system with multi-member constituencies using “proportional representation” through the cumulative vote system. His argument was that the single-member constituency system leads to the "tyranny of the majority” and that many votes are wasted because only the winning candidate’s votes matter. Karimuddin argued that single-member constituencies often completely disfranchise minorities, and that proportional representation would give political minorities (not just religious ones) a fair share of representation.
He argued that if PR with multi-member constituencies is adopted, the system of reserved seats (even for SC/ST) should be abolished entirely. Interestingly, the current dispensation is presenting its delimitation push as a measure to implement the 33 per cent women's reservation.
Karimuddin framed his arguments in such a way that proportional representation is required to counter the tendencies of separatism, communalism and isolationism to disappear from the body politics of India.
“We cannot ignore the existing conditions in the country. We find that there is a movement for the establishment of a Hindu Raj,” said Karimuddin. “We find that there is an RSS organisation also in the country. In view of this, we have to proceed cautiously and gradually, and therefore we have to find out a way that communalism must go and the minorities must be represented in the legislatures.”
Literacy question
During the Assembly proceedings, Thakur Das Bhargava, who was elected to the Constituent Assembly on a Congress ticket from East Punjab, suggested making literacy a qualification for voting for the first 10 years as a measure to promote adult education. He argued that reading and writing could be learned in three months and proposed conditioning the right to vote on literacy to improve the quality of elections. This argument was rejected.
Nevertheless, India’s low literacy rate in 1949 (less than 14 per cent) became a key argument used by B.R. Ambedkar to reject the idea of proportional representation proposed by Karimuddin, on behalf of the Drafting Committee.
“I do not think it is possible to accept this amendment, because, so far as I am able to judge the merits of the system of proportional representation in the light of the circumstances as they exist in this country, I think that amendment cannot be accepted. My friend Mr. Karimuddin will, I think, accept the proposition that proportional representation presupposes literacy on a large scale. In fact, it presupposes that every voter shall be literate, at least to the extent of being in a position to know the numerals and to be able to mark them on a ballot paper,” Ambedkar said.
The chairman of the Drafting Committee then went on to say that, given the literacy levels in the country, such a presupposition would be utterly extravagant. “Our literacy is the smallest, I believe, in the world, and it would be quite impossible to impose upon an illiterate mass of voters a system of election which involves marking of ballot papers. That in itself would, I think, exclude the system of proportional representation,” he said, rejecting it on grounds of complexity.
Today, India’s literacy rate is estimated to be closer to 80 per cent. However, keeping the electoral process simple remains a key concern—even now—and continues to be a strong argument against any push for proportional representation, especially when compared to the First-Past-The-Post system (single vote, single candidate, clear winner), which is inherently easier for voters to understand.
Cap question
Much like today, the 1949 discussions also dwelt extensively on what should be the ideal number of Members of Parliament. Draft Article 67(5)(a) placed a cap—no more than 500 representatives—on members directly elected from the states. Socialist economist K.T. Shah and some other members strongly argued for amendments to remove or relax this rigid upper limit.
Shah pointed out that the population was increasing rapidly and that the Constitution should not permanently fix the maximum number of representatives. “We have observed the tendency, during the last three or four censuses, towards a steady increase in the population of our country in every decennium. The last census shows an increase of as much as 15 per cent in ten years. If you fix the absolute maximum number, it would happen that you might change the number of persons represented by each representative in an undesirable direction. That is to say, the representative character of each representative would become lesser and lesser, as he would be representing larger and larger numbers,” he argued. “…Instead, we should allow the number to shape itself according to the varying population.”
Interestingly, there were also those who felt that 500 itself was already “large enough”. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar, elected from the southern province of Madras on a Congress ticket, was a key member in raising this argument. He argued: “In a House which consists of three hundred members, almost every day we have to ring the bell to get a quorum; so what is the good of multiplying the number?”
Today, it is the southern states—especially Tamil Nadu—that are raising strong opposition to significantly increasing the cap, calling it a “blatant assault on democracy” and a “conspiracy” to punish southern states for successful population control.