Abhijit Chaliha
(abhijitchaliha1409@gmail.com)
The Election Commission published on Tuesday its draft proposal on the delimitation of Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies in Assam, retaining its total Lok Sabha (LS) and Assembly seats at 14 and 126, respectively. According to an official statement, the EC has proposed that the number of Assembly seats reserved for Scheduled Castes be increased from eight to nine and for Scheduled Tribes from 16 to 19. Now, the question is whether the delimitation of Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies in Assam is beneficial for the indigenous people of Assam or not. As a journalist, I personally carried out a survey among selected leading political leaders, the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), and other ethnic organisations in the state. They all expressed their positive concern over the delimitation process. According to them, this will surely provide a safeguard for the indigenous people of Assam in the future. We, the indigenous people of Assam, are now gradually losing our identities and rights politically, economically, and socially. In this context, the ECI has taken an important step for the sake of the ethnic society of the state, they added. The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) has said that while the delimitation of Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies in the state is necessary, the interests of the indigenous people must be protected during the process. “The process should not be for the benefit of any political party”. Similarly, almost all the political parties, non-government organisations, societies, and ethnic groups and organisations of the state support the delimitation process. In this regard, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said delimitation can provide the safeguards that the NRC and the Assam Accord of 1985 envisaged but failed to provide. He said this in the context of a “demographic invasion” that the BJP and its regional allies think will eventually see Assam taken over by Bengali-speaking or Bengali-origin Muslims. He fought for constitutional, legislative, and administrative safeguards for the indigenous people, as envisaged by the Assam Accord, to save Assam’s “law-abiding communities with small families” from “those who disregard government policies to produce 12 children”. Unlike the unsuccessful NRC, delimitation can save the future of Assam for at least two decades by ensuring the State Assembly is less affected by demographic changes, he said. The BJP and some NGOs believe the NRC draft list included too many “non-citizens” by leaving out “only” 19.06 lakh out of 3.3 crore applicants. The Chief Minister also asserted that political leaders should not worry about losing out if more seats are ‘reserved for SCs and STs after the delimitation’, indicating a rearrangement of seats where Muslims have been a deciding factor. Three of the districts that merged with their parent districts have a sizable Muslim population. It is to be mentioned that under the provisions of the Delimitation Act, 1972, the last delimitation of constituencies in Assam was done on the basis of census figures from 1971 by the then Delimitation Commission in 1976. The present delimitation exercise will be carried out on the basis of the 2011 census, which reported that Muslim demography has a major influence on electoral outcomes in Assam and forms 34.22% of the state’s total population. It also stated that Muslims formed a majority in nine of the total 27 districts (six more districts were formed after the 2011 census).