How Tamil Nadu got 234 Assembly seats: The Delimitation Commission’s calculated departure Premium

Explore how the Delimitation Commission's 1963 decision established Tamil Nadu's 234 Assembly seats for balanced representation.

Have you ever wondered how and when the Tamil Nadu Assembly’s strength was fixed at 234 seats? This number was arrived at by the Delimitation Commission, which undertook the post-1961 Census redistribution of Lok Sabha and Assembly seats.

Under Article 170 of the Constitution and Section 8(b) of the Delimitation Commission Act, 1962, the number of seats in a State Assembly must be an integral multiple of the number of Lok Sabha seats allotted to that State.

At the time, 14 States together accounted for 481 parliamentary seats. Madras (as Tamil Nadu was known then) had 41. In addition, Jammu and Kashmir had six seats, the Naga Hills-Tuensang Area one seat, the North East Frontier Tract one seat and the Union Territories 18 seats, taking the overall total to 507.

The Delimitation Commission — chaired by Justice J.L. Kapur, with C.P. Sinha and K.V.K. Sundaram as members — noted that Article 81(1) fixed the maximum number of directly elected Lok Sabha members at 500. This meant the maximum seats available for allocation among the 14 States was 493.

“The total population of these States has increased very considerably during the last ten years with the result that the average population per parliamentary constituency has increased from 732,654 in 1951 to 889,257 in 1961. Further, the increase is far from being uniform for all the States,” the Commission recorded.

After reviewing demographic changes revealed by the 1961 Census, the Commission concluded retaining the existing 481 seats would disproportionately penalise some larger States. Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Madras would each have lost three seats, while Bihar would have lost one.