• Adv. Rajiv Sharma

Democracy is the finest system of governance humanity has devised, a covenant built on the principle of government of the people, by the people, for the people. Yet, even democracy carries within it a fatal vulnerability. When majority rule becomes an end in itself, it mutates into majoritarianism, which is akin to a tyranny where the powerful majority governs only for itself, trampling the rights of minorities, the underprivileged, and the weak. This is precisely the transformation that Narendra Modi’s government has been engineering, brick-by-brick, since 2014.

Post-2014, India is no longer merely showing ominous signs of democratic weakening but it is also witnessing a deliberate, systematic dismantling of constitutional democracy and its replacement with naked majoritarianism. Modi’s government has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to override constitutional provisions, emasculate independent institutions, and bend the republic’s foundational architecture to serve its own electoral agenda. The Delimitation Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha on April 16, 2026, was the most brazen manifestation of this dangerous ambition. India’s founding fathers were aware that a nation as vast and diverse as ours could never survive on majoritarian arithmetic alone. They understood that the rights of those who vote against a ruling government are as sacrosanct as those who vote for it. Articles 81 and 82 of the Constitution mandate that Lok Sabha seats be allocated proportionally to population and readjusted after every census, a provision that appeared perfectly democratic on paper in 1950. But it was not so, as the later developments revealed.

By the 1970s, a dangerous federal fault line had emerged. The southern states like Tamil Nadu, Keralam, Andhra Pradesh (Telangana), and Karnataka had responded responsibly to the national call for family planning. They invested in women’s education, healthcare, and social reform, bringing their fertility rates down dramatically. The northern states, by contrast, lagged far behind on every one of these indicators. The cruel and perverse irony of strict population-based delimitation was now starkly apparent as early as the 1970s. As per the constitutional provisions, the states that had complied with national policy would be punished with fewer parliamentary seats, while states that resisted family planning would be rewarded with greater political power. Majoritarianism, in its most unjust form, would become the governing principle of the Indian republic.

Indira Gandhi & Vajpayee Kept National Interest Above Party Politics

But former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi recognised this fundamental injustice. She made a difficult but profoundly principled decision. In 1976, through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment, her government froze the allocation of Lok Sabha seats to each state at 1971 census levels until the first census after 2000. It was an act of genuine statesmanship, placing national unity and federal equity firmly above political convenience. She understood that numbers alone cannot be the sole arbiter of power in a federation of deeply unequal states. By 2001, the demographic chasm between North and South had widened further. The Vajpayee government, to its credit, rose to the same occasion. Through the 84th Constitutional Amendment, it extended the freeze on delimitation. Once again, national interest prevailed over partisan calculation.

Both leaders, from opposing political traditions, chose India over their party. That is the standard by which Narendra Modi must now be judged, and by which he fails miserably and catastrophically.

Modi’s Betrayal: Electoral Ambition Over National Unity

In April 2026, with the demographic divide between North and South wider than at any point in independent India’s history, the Modi government did precisely the opposite of what Indira Gandhi and Vajpayee had done. It introduced a Constitution Amendment Bill to trigger a full-scale interstate delimitation exercise. It was not on the basis of a fresh, constitutionally mandated census, but on the outdated 2011 Census data. It proposed inflating the Lok Sabha from 543 seats to 850, a move that, under population-proportional allocation, would overwhelmingly benefit the BJP’s northern electoral strongholds at the direct expense of the southern states. National unity was being sacrificed, cold-bloodedly, at the altar of electoral victory. But the Modi’s government, could not dare to present this agenda honestly before the nation.

The Deception: Women’s Reservation as a Shield

On April 16, 2026, three bills were simultaneously introduced in a special parliamentary session. The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026; the Delimitation Bill, 2026; and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026. They were packaged, with calculated cynicism, as legislation to “operationalise” women’s reservation in Parliament. This was a masterclass in political deception. The Women’s Reservation Bill had already been unanimously passed in 2023 as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, the 106th Constitutional Amendment. Crucially, the Modi government had then sat on it for nearly three years, refusing to notify it, until opposition pressure in April 2026 compelled them to act. If the BJP genuinely cared about women’s political representation, they had three years to act. They did not. The women’s reservation issue was never the agenda; it was only a packaging. Delimitation was always the real product, that they wanted.

Leader of Opposition Shri Rahul Gandhi cut through the subterfuge with precision: “They used an unconstitutional trick in the name of women to break the Constitution. India has seen it. INDIA has stopped it.” He rightly called it an “anti-national act” and an attempt to redraw India’s electoral map to serve the BJP’s interests, just as they had already done unilaterally in Assam and Jammu & Kashmir.

The Modi government further misled Parliament by verbally claiming that every state would receive a 50% increase in seats. This assurance was legally worthless as it was absent from the text of the bill. The 131st Amendment Bill set a ceiling of 850 seats, not a guarantee of proportional growth. The actual allocation would be determined entirely by population ratios under a Delimitation Commission.

The Congress Party and its allies in the INDIA block rose to the moment and demolished this sinister legislative design. The resounding defeat of the Delimitation Constitutional Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha in April 2026 was not merely a parliamentary victory, it was a defence of India’s constitutional soul. The Congress Party reiterates its unequivocal demand: the Women’s Reservation Bill passed in September 2023 must be implemented immediately, without any linkage to delimitation or any other precondition. Women’s political empowerment must not be held hostage to the BJP’s electoral engineering.

The Federal Fault Line: Delimitation would have torn India apart

The demographic divergence between North and South India is not a minor statistical variation. It is a chasm that has been widening for five decades. Some states in North India, like UP and Bihar, continue to record Total Fertility Rates (TFR) significantly above the national replacement level. Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu, Keralam, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Karnataka have achieved TFRs at or below replacement level, a demographic transition that took developed nations generations to accomplish. In this scenario, the message the Delimitation Bill sends to every state government in India is unambiguous and dangerous: responsible governance costs you the political power, while demographic indiscipline earns you more of it. This amounts to punishing success and rewarding failure.

Further, India is a union of states, bound together by a constitutional convention that guarantees every state a meaningful share in the governance of the country. It rests on an implicit promise: that no region will be permanently subordinated to another.

The moment the Modi government’s delimitation exercise was to be completed, the South would realise it is dominated overwhelmingly by the Hindi belt, which would determine their tax allocation, their share of central funds, their linguistic rights, and their developmental priorities. The implicit promise would have been shattered. The Finance Commission allocations, the distribution of central schemes, the appointment of constitutional authorities, the legislative agenda of Parliament, all of these would have been determined by a northern majority with interests, priorities, and cultural orientations fundamentally different from those of the South.

The leaders of southern states were not silent about this danger. Voices from across the political spectrum in Tamil Nadu, Keralam, and Karnataka, including parties that have at times supported the BJP, expressed alarm at the implications of the Delimitation Bill. When politicians of different ideologies in a region speak with one voice, it is not politics, it is a warning. But Narendra Modi chose to ignore it.

The exercise of delimitation would have caused the permanent entrenchment of majoritarian power, dressed in the language of constitutional reform. And that is precisely why the Congress Party and the INDIA block had no choice but to defeat it, completely and without compromise.

The Deeper Pattern: RSS, Division, and Democratic Destruction

Modi’s delimitation gambit is not an aberration. It is consistent with a deeper ideological legacy. The BJP’s ideological mentors, the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, have a long and documented history of prioritising communal arithmetic over national unity. Their communal politics, along with those of the Muslim League, contributed directly to the tragedy of Partition. Seventy-nine years later, the same ideological current, now wielding state power, is working to fracture India’s social compact, corrode its constitutional institutions, and replace its pluralist democracy with majoritarian dominance.

The Modi government must confront an inescapable truth that demographic majoritarianism and democratic unity are not the same thing. A government that pursues the former while claiming the latter is not building India, it is dividing it.

The Congress Party will not allow any such anti-India agenda of this government to pass. It has stopped them now. It will stop them again.

The author is General Secretary and Chief spokesperson, Chandigarh Congress