The Madras High Court has termed as “unfair and unreasonable” the reduction in number of parliamentary seats based on the population of a State. It said the practice amounted to punishing States which implemented birth control measures successfully.
Justices N. Kirubakaran (since retired) and B. Pugalendhi wanted to know why the Centre should not be directed to pay a notional compensation of ₹5,600 crore to Tamil Nadu for having reduced its Member of Parliament (MP) seats from 41 to 39 since the 1967 general election.
The judges suo motu impleaded prominent political parties as respondents to a case before them and wanted to know why the number of MP seats in Tamil Nadu should not be restored to 41 or at least frozen at 39 without any further reduction based on future census. The Bench made the observations and raised the queries while rejecting a plea to de-reserve Tenkasi parliamentary constituency. It said no such direction could be issued since the law does not permit reservation of parliamentary constituencies on rotation. The court, however, recommended an amendment to reserve parliamentary constituencies on rotation. Despite rejecting the litigant’s plea, the judges kept the case pending for the Centre and the political parties to answer the other queries raised by them in public interest. They pointed out that every single MP was important and referred to the no-confidence motion moved by the Opposition in 1999 when the Bharatiya Janata Party government, led by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had fallen for want of a single vote.
Authoring the order, Justice Kirubakaran said there had been 14 general elections since 1967 and Tamil Nadu had so far lost about 28 MPs due to the reduction of two seats. The loss could be fixed notionally at ₹200 crore for each MP, he said.
Directing the Centre to explain in four weeks, the judge also advocated an amendment to Article 81 of the Constitution so that the number of Parliamentary seats could be frozen irrespective of individual States’ population.
