EAC-PM recommends targeted splitting of seats for delimitation, models 50% rise for all large States

📌 Summary:

• The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) has, in a new working paper, recommended a "multi-factor" / "targeted" criterion for splitting seats in India's next delimitation of parliamentary constituencies, going beyond pure population distribution
• The model maintains the current proportion of Lok Sabha seats for all large States — i.e., it avoids penalising southern/smaller-population States that have controlled population growth
• Under the model the Lok Sabha rises to 824 seats; illustrative outcomes: Kerala 20 to 30, Tamil Nadu 39 to 59, Uttar Pradesh 80 to 120 (a broadly uniform ~50% rise for large States)
• The council built a dataset of Lok Sabha elections from 2009 to 2024 to estimate a statistical relationship between voter turnout, constituency size and five compositional features of a constituency
• The result is broadly in line with what the Centre proposed in April 2026, when it introduced Delimitation-related Bills that failed to pass in Parliament

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS2 (delimitation, federalism and Centre-State equity, representation and the "north-south divide" in seat allocation). A core polity-and-federalism flashpoint, since population-only delimitation would shift parliamentary weight toward the populous north.

📝 Prelims Facts:

• EAC-PM is a non-constitutional, non-statutory, independent advisory body to the PM on economic matters
• Delimitation in India is carried out by a Delimitation Commission; seat numbers have been frozen since the 42nd Amendment (1976), extended by the 84th Amendment to 2026
• Current Lok Sabha strength is 543 elected seats

🔑 Key Term: Delimitation — the process of redrawing boundaries and re-allocating the number of seats of Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies based on the latest census.