The basic purpose of elections is that the voters can elect individuals to represent their interests in the legislature. Elections can be considered fair and free if all adults have one vote to cast, and the value of each vote is equal, irrespective of a voter's wealth, caste, religion, region and gender. However, elections in India have failed to ensure that each vote bears the same value.
One vote, different value
The value of a vote, of voters living in different States, in different parts of the same State or even within the same city, is not the same. The reason for this is that the political territory is fixed over time, but the number and composition of people within it keep changing. There is large-scale migration from rural to urban areas, from poorer States to better-off States, and from the central parts of a city to the suburbs.
Take for example, the Chandni Chowk Parliamentary constituency of Delhi, where the total number of voters was around five lakh, and the Outer Delhi Parliamentary constituency, where the total number of voters was around 30 lakh, in the 2004 general elections. Although all eligible voters of Chandni Chowk Parliamentary constituency and Outer Delhi Parliamentary constituency could cast only one vote to elect one individual, the value of one vote of the voters in Chandni Chowk was around six times that of voters in Outer Delhi.
Let us take one more example from the Karnataka Assembly elections in 2004. The total number of voters in Shivaji Nagar Assembly constituency in Bangalore was 81,358, against 13,76,130 in Uttarahalli Assembly constituency, also in Bangalore. More than 13.76 lakh voters of Uttarahalli elected one representative to the State Assembly, against less than one lakh voters of Shivaji Nagar Assembly constituency doing the same. The value of one vote in Shivaji Nagar Assembly constituency was almost equal to 17 votes in Uttarahalli Assembly constituency.
CONSTITUTIONAL BACKDROP
The role of delimitation in ensuring one vote, one value, cannot be overstated. Article 82 of the Constitution provides that upon the completion of each census, the allocation of seats in the House of the People and to the State Assemblies and the division of each State into territorial constituencies shall be readjusted.
Delimitation was undertaken on the basis of the 1951, 1961 and 1971 Census. There was no delimitation of territorial constituencies on the basis of 1981 census and 1991 census. The last delimitation took place on the basis of 2001 census, but the Lok Sabha general elections held in 2004 and all State Assembly Elections held till March 2008 were on the basis of the delimitation done in 1971. (It was only in 2009 that the general elections for Lok Sabha were held on the basis of territorial constituencies delimited on the basis of 2001 census.) As all the Lok Sabha elections held between 1980 and 2004 were based on the 1971 census, the principle of one vote, one value could not be adhered to.
Why were all the Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections from 1977 to 2007 held on the basis of 1971 census? The relevant provisions of the Constitution were amended during Indira Gandhi's Emergency rule in 1976. Under the Constitution (Forty Second) Amendment Act, the whole process of delimitation of territorial constituencies and readjustment of representation was suspended until 2001, and Parliamentary and Legislative representation was frozen at the 1971 census figures.
The Notes on clauses attached to the Forty Fourth Amendment Bill (which after its passage became the Forty Second Amendment) offered the following justification: “In the context of the intensification of the family planning programmes of the Government, it is considered that not only the allocation of seats in the House of the People, to the States and the total number of seats in the Legislative Assembly of the States, but also the extent of Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies and the reservations of seats for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes as determined on the basis of the 1971 Census, should be frozen till the year 2001.”
THE UNDER-ENFRANCHISED
Which groups of citizens have suffered a dip in the value of their vote? To understand this, we would have to see changes in the distribution of population over time, and the role of rural-to-urban migration.
Between 1971 and 2001, the total population of India increased from 548 million to 1025 million, an increase of 87 per cent. If we assume that the natural increase of population in urban India during this period was 87 per cent (a generous estimate), the urban population should have risen by 93 million. But the actual increase over this period was 178 million. In other words, another 85 million was due to migration from rural areas. So, the share of migration in total increase in India's urban population between 1971 and 2001 was around 48 per cent. This share has only increased between 2001 and 2011.
Hence, the value of votes of urban voters was less in 2004 Lok Sabha elections than in 1977, and vice-versa in the case of a section of rural voters.
SLUM POPULATION
A major proportion of the migrants to urban areas are from socially and economically marginalised groups. A large number of SCs migrate as well, because of social exploitation in rural areas. Such populations are forced to stay in ‘unauthorised' shelters in slums or footpaths, in the periphery of a city, where land rentals are cheaper. This is one of the reasons why the voter population of outer Delhi was six times that of Chandni Chowk for the Parliamentary elections, or the Uttarahalli Assembly constituency electorate was some 17 times larger than the Shivajinagar Assembly constituency.
The slum population increased by 168 per cent in twenty years (between 1981 and 2001), whereas the urban population increased by 83 per cent during the same period.
If constituencies are not delimited at regular intervals, it impacts hardest the urban poor in the periphery of large cities. This amounts to their silent disenfranchisement.
As Dr B. R. Ambedkar had observed: “In politics we will be recognising the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?”
(The author is Designate-Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.)