Assam delimitation exercise: How the northeastern state plans to redraw its constituencies

The team of the Election Commission's (EC) leadership body is in Assam to check the ongoing delimitation exercise. The exercise had been stuck for 14 years.

The last delimitation in Assam was done in 1976. Last year, the Election Commission (EC) announced the delimitation exercise of assembly and parliamentary constituencies in the northeastern state using the 2001 census data. 

Why was delimitation paused in Assam for 14 long years? 

Delimitation panels were regularly established four times (1952, 1962, 1972, and 2002) before the procedure was halted in 1976 due to state family planning programmes. The last Commission was set up in 2002 but before its exercise was completed in 2008, the delimitation of four north-eastern States — Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, and Nagaland—was postponed owing to "security risks" through separate presidential orders.

For identical reasons, Jammu and Kashmir was likewise excluded from that delimitation exercise. In addition to maintaining law and order, the BJP and other Assamese organisations opposed delimitation in 2008 because they wanted it to happen only after the National Register of Citizens (NRC) had been updated to clear out "illegal immigrants".

Delimitation under scrutiny

The opposition has however questioned the timing of the EC move and the base year for delimitation.

In March 2023, the Guwahati High Court issued two notices to the Assam government asking it to explain within four weeks why it had dissolved Hojai and Biswanath districts.

In the assembly, replying to a question by Congress MLA Rekibuddin Ahmed on the delimitation process, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, "Delimitation process in Assam started on January 1 this year. We are not in a position to say when it will be over as the state government is not involved in it either directly or indirectly. The Election Commission of India is a constitutional body and the state government is not associated with such a constitutional body."

"Our job is to provide the data as reflected in the census to them. A self-styled draft of delimitation is in circulation. I want to say this draft has no relevance because it is not the commission's draft and the government junks the draft as imaginary and this amounts to barring the people of the constituencies from legal rights," he added.

No new administrative units 

Notably, on December 27 last year, the EC announced a new delineation of the 126 assemblies and 14 parliamentary seats, and with effect on January 1, it prohibited the creation of new administrative units. While there would be no increase in seats due to delimitation, the boundaries of some constituencies would get redrawn.

The state Cabinet later came up with an idea to merge four districts with the ones from which they were carved out and made separate districts. Biswanath was merged with Sonitpur, Hojai with Nagaon, Tamulpur with Baksa and Bajali with Barpeta.

The decision to combine the districts was made just one day before the Election Commission's ban on establishing new administrative units in Assam beginning on January 1, 2023, as the poll panel would be responsible for conducting the state's delimitation exercise, came into force. 

What is delimitation?

Delimitation is redrawing of the boundaries of an assembly or Lok Sabha constituency. It is done to reflect the demographic changes in a state, Union Territory or at the national level.