21 of 57 TN MPs attend CM Vijay’s meet, reject Delimitation Bill; DMK, AIADMK stay away | India News
NEW DELHI: Tamil Nadu MPs on Saturday “unanimously” decided to oppose Centre’s Delimitation Bill after chief minister C Joseph Vijay chaired a meeting to discuss its likely impact on the state.Congress MP Karti Chidambaram said around 21 out of 57 Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha MPs attended the meeting and agreed to resist any alteration in Tamil Nadu’s representation in Parliament.“The chief minister of Tamil Nadu had called for a meeting for all the MPs from Tamil Nadu from both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. About 21 of us attended the meeting, and there was absolute unanimity that Tamil Nadu’s rights must be preserved. Our representation in Parliament can’t be diminished. Any kind of alteration and delimitation, either on the basis of population or on a proportionate increase, will be resisted,” Chidambaram said.“We want Parliament to be frozen at 543, and the distribution among the states to be preserved as it is, which means Tamil Nadu will have 39 members in a House of 543. We are clear in our unanimous opinion that a larger Parliament will be an ineffective Parliament, and Tamil Nadu will not be well served by a larger Parliament. So we want Parliament to be preserved at 543 with the same representation of 39 Lok Sabha MPs for Tamil Nadu,” he added.The meeting was boycotted by the DMK and AIADMK, which dismissed the deliberations as a “farce” and a “drama”.The meeting was held at Kalaivanar Arangam, a government-owned auditorium near the Secretariat.Senior DMK leader A Raja told reporters in Perambalur that it was “a farce, a laughable exercise”, arguing that the TVK government was deliberating on an issue about which it had no clarity.Meanwhile, AIADMK called the meeting a “hurriedly staged drama”, pointing out that no new delimitation Bill had been introduced in Parliament and there had been no official announcement on the exercise.While the Congress and other opposition parties have supported the Women’s Reservation Bill, they have opposed linking its implementation to the delimitation exercise. The opposition has demanded that women’s reservation be delinked from delimitation.
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The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023, was passed by both Houses of Parliament. However, its implementation has not moved forward after the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill fell in the Lok Sabha on April 17, failing to secure the constitutionally required two-thirds majority of members present and voting.The Bill linked the implementation of 33 percent women’s reservation in legislatures to delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies.
