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Karnataka
By Our Special Correspondent
This fact emerged out of a meeting the Chairman of the Delimitation Commission of India, Justice Kuldip Singh, had with representatives of the various political parties here today. Mr. Justice Kuldip Singh, who is a retired judge of the Supreme Court, arrived here today for a two-day meeting along with one of the Election Commissioners, Tandon. The associate members of the commission from Karnataka are the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, M.V. Venkatappa, the former Prime Minister, H.D. Deve Gowda, Margaret Alva, G.S. Basavaraj, K.H. Muniyappa, Ananth Kumar (MPs), the Home Minister, Mallikarjun Kharge, the Urban Development Minister, D.K. Shivakumar, the Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly, Jagadish Shettar, and P.G.R. Sindhia, JD(U) MLA. The State Election Commissioner, C. Chikkanna, is an ex-officio member of the commission. Mr. Justice Kuldip Singh held discussions with officials of the State Election Commission, and the State's Chief Electoral Officer, Dilip Rau, before meeting leaders of political parties. Leaders of the major political parties except the BJP met the commission. The Congress was represented by V.S. Ugrappa and Abdul Wahab (general secretaries), the JD(S) by C. Narayanaswamy, Secretary-General, the JD-U by H.T. Krishnappa and B. Sripathy Rao, and the CPI(M) by Nagaraj. Mr. Justice Singh is stated to have told the meeting that though the Bill providing for delimitation of constituencies on the basis of the 2001 Census of population was yet to become an Act, the commission would proceed on the basis of the Census. The Bill was yet to be ratified by the Legislative Assemblies of more than half the number of States. It may be mentioned that the delimitation of constituencies till now was on the basis of the 1971 Census.
LS seats
Of the 28 Lok Sabha seats from Karnataka, the number of seats reserved for SCs will go up from four to five or six, and that for STs (who have no reserved seats at present) will be two or three. However, in view of the freeze in the number of seats in Parliament and the State Legislatures till 2025, the membership of the Legislative Assembly will remain the same. The increase in the seats reserved for SCs and STs will be on account of the fact that the reservation for them will be in proportionate to their population (Articles 330 and 332 of the Constitution). The SC population in the State has been put at 17 per cent and that of STs at nine per cent. The ST population has gone up because of the inclusion of the Naik (and its synonyms) caste in the list on April 19,1991. In the present Assembly, the two constituencies reserved for STs are Gokak in Belgaum District and Virajpet in Kodagu District.
24 seats for Bangalore
Today's discussions with the commission yielded the fact that the number of Assembly constituencies in the State Capital, Bangalore, will go up from 12 to 24. Besides Bangalore Urban District, the number of constituencies in Raichur, Bellary, and Davangere districts will go up by one each. However, all the other districts will lose one or two seats each. The loss will be two each in the case of Mandya and Tumkur. The other districts to lose one constituency each are Gadag, Chitradurga, Shimoga, Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Chickmagalur, Kolar, Bangalore Rural, Hassan, Kodagu, Mysore, and Chamarajanagar. Mr. Justice Singh is stated to have told the meeting that the exact composition of the Legislative Assembly and the State's representation in the Lok Sabha would be known by September when the final figures of the 2001 Census were expected to be available. As a result of the freeze in the number of constituencies, and the increase in population, the size of the constituencies will go up substantially. Each Assembly constituency in Karnataka will have an average voter strength of 2,35,419 as against 1,30,799 in 1971. The corresponding figures for the Lok Sabha seats will be 18,83,356 as against 10,46,393 in 1971. Till 1971, the Legislative Assembly had a strength of 216, and the number of Lok Sabha seats was 26. The Congress leaders told the commission that gram panchayats in rural areas, and wards in urban areas should be the units for delimitation of constituencies.
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