Thursday, Jun 19, 2003
Thursday, Jun 19, 2003 |
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Tamil Nadu
By Our Special Correspondent
The Commission has the task of ensuring near equal populations in all constituencies in each of the 27 States and two of the seven Union Territories, Delhi and Pondicherry. It does not cover Jammu and Kashmir. In all, the work covers 543 Lok Sabha and about 4,100 Assembly constituencies. The present boundaries of constituencies were drawn up in 1976, based on the 1971 census. Addressing presspersons here today, its chairman, Kuldip Singh, said that even if the Lok Sabha elections are held only as per schedule in 2004, the task would not be completed since the Commission had just begun to work on the basis of the 2001 census. In fact, this was the first sitting of the Committee using the 2001 census as baseline. Tomorrow, the Commission will hold a sitting in Pondicherry and later in the other southern States. Earlier, it was asked to use the 1991 census report. ``We had completed as much as 80 per cent of the work when Parliament asked us to use the 2001 census for redrawing up the constituencies,'' said Mr. Singh. When the Commission was constituted in July 2002, it was asked to work on the basis of the 1991 census statistics.
Census report by Oct.
Right now, the work of the Commission was impeded since the new Amendment (asking the Commission to take up its work based on the 2001 census) is not yet law. Secondly, the detailed census report was yet to be published. The detailed census report was likely to be made available to the Commission by this October. ``We expect to complete our work in one year's time from then,'' he said. At today's full Commission meeting, with its associate members, the Commission made available the district-wise population statistics. It also told them that this was preliminary work and there was a lot of ground to be covered.
AIADMK, DMK unanimous in opinion
The DMK members, K. Ponmudi, MLA, and C. Kuppusamy, MP, requested the Commission to use voter statistics as the basis, not population. In their opinion, only this would yield the desired results. Asked about this, the Commission said the Constitution mandated that it use population figures and not voter details. ``This is the system followed the world over,'' said B.B. Tandon, Election Commissioner, a member of the Commission. The AIADMK members, including P.H. Pandian, M.P. and C. Sivasamy, MLA, stressed the need for taking into consideration the opinion of the people before finalising the boundaries. Besides, they said the urban migration issues should also be considered. To this, the Commission said that once its draft was ready, it would seek the opinion of the people. Both the DMK and AIADMK members were unanimous in their opinion that without the details of the 2001 census there could be no real forward movement on the issue. The Commission said that it had made available ``paper one,'' which detailed the provisional population in districts. However, the caste-wise population data was yet to come in.
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