India's 543 Lok Sabha Seats Are Still Shared Among the States by the 1971 Census, and the Constitution Ties Any Change to Figures From the First Census After 2026

The Lok Sabha has 543 elected seats, and the number each State holds is worked out from the 1971 census, not the latest one. The Constitution’s rule is that a State’s seats should follow its population, and since 3 January 1977 it has defined “population” for that purpose as the 1971 count until figures from the first census taken after 2026 are published. Census 2027, with a reference date of 1 March 2027, is that census.

The result is that Uttar Pradesh, with about 16.5 percent of India’s 2011 population, holds 80 seats (14.7 percent of the House), and Kerala, with about 2.8 percent, holds 20 (3.7 percent). A bill to move to the 2011 census, introduced on 16 April 2026, was negatived in the Lok Sabha the next day. Our guide to how the Lok Sabha works covers the House itself. This piece covers how its seats are shared.

The rule in Article 81

Article 81 caps the House at 550 members, up to 530 chosen from constituencies in the States and up to 20 for the Union territories. Clause (2)(a) tells Parliament to allot seats so that “the ratio between that number and the population of the State is, so far as practicable, the same for all States.” The same article requires each State’s own constituencies to be drawn with roughly equal population.

One exception sits in the proviso. A State whose population does not exceed six million (60 lakh) is not held to the ratio. Sikkim had 6.1 lakh people in 2011, and at the national average of about 22.3 lakh people per seat the ratio alone would give it about a quarter of a seat. It holds one, as do Mizoram and Nagaland.

The first general election, in 1951 to 1952, filled 489 seats, according to the Press Information Bureau’s 2024 election compendium. The ceiling for State seats rose from 525 to 530 with the Goa, Daman and Diu Reorganisation Act, 1987, in force from 30 May 1987. Seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the groups the Constitution lists for special protection, are set under Article 330 in proportion to their share of each State’s population, counted for now at the 2001 census.

How 1971 became the fixed year

Article 82 says that after every census, Parliament readjusts two things by law: how many seats each State holds, and the boundaries of constituencies inside it. This process is called delimitation. A readjustment does not touch the sitting House and takes effect from a date the President specifies by order.

Parliament added the freeze through the 42nd Amendment, whose changes to Articles 81 and 82 took effect on 3 January 1977. It fixed the meaning of “population” as the 1971 census and said readjustment was not necessary until figures from the first census after 2000 were published. The 84th Amendment, in force from 21 February 2002, moved the date to the first census after 2026. PRS Legislative Research, which tracks bills for Parliament, describes that extension as a “motivational measure” so State governments could pursue population stabilisation.

The 87th Amendment, in force from 22 June 2003, let boundaries inside States be redrawn on the 2001 census without changing any State’s total. The Delimitation Commission formed in 2002 did that work, and its orders were finalised in 2008 under a notification dated 19 February 2008, PRS records. Article 329(a) says no court may question the validity of a law on delimitation or on the allotment of seats.

The 1971 reference runs wider than the Lok Sabha. Article 170 applies the same freeze to the State Assemblies, and Article 55 uses the 1971 census to work out how many votes each MP and MLA casts in the election of the President.

What the freeze looks like in seats and in people

PRS published a table on 16 April 2026 that sets each State’s 2011 population against its seats. Dividing the 2011 population of 121.09 crore by 543 gives about 22.3 lakh people per seat. The table below adds tuput’s own division of each State’s 2011 population by its current seats, beside PRS’s projection of what a redistribution of the same 543 seats on the 2011 census would give.

The projection is PRS’s illustration, not a plan. The 2011 census cannot be used for this purpose under the current text, and a Delimitation Commission would settle the real numbers. With a House 50 percent larger, PRS projects Uttar Pradesh at 133 seats, Bihar at 69, Tamil Nadu at 48 and Kerala at 22, so every State gains seats while shares still move.

What each side says

The southern case is about the purpose of the freeze. A Tamil Nadu all-party meeting on 5 March 2025 resolved that any future delimitation should use the 1971 census and that the boundaries should then stay frozen for 30 years from 2026, with constitutional amendments to make that possible, The Tribune reported. The State’s Chief Minister argued that Tamil Nadu’s 7.18 percent share of seats should not change. On 22 March 2025 a joint action committee in Chennai, with leaders from at least five States, asked the Union government to extend the freeze by 25 years and not to penalise States that had carried out population control programmes, Scroll reported.

The Union government’s reply, from the Union Home Minister on 26 February 2025, was that no seat in any southern State would be reduced, citing the Prime Minister’s statement in Parliament. A statement by the Union government quoted by Outlook put the five southern States’ share of the House at 23.76 percent now and 23.90 percent after a 50 percent expansion pro rata.

The equal-representation case rests on the Constitution’s own sentence in Article 81(2)(a) and on the numbers in the table above. The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the 131st Amendment Bill says the freeze “served an important policy purpose”, but that the country’s demographics have since changed enough to leave “wide disparities in the population and the constituencies.”

Fertility figures are part of the argument. The Ministry of Health told the Lok Sabha on 24 July 2026 that India’s Total Fertility Rate, the average number of children per woman, was 2.0 in the sixth National Family Health Survey (2023-24). Bihar’s rate fell from 3.0 in the fifth survey (2019-21) to 2.7, Uttar Pradesh’s from 2.4 to 2.2 and Tamil Nadu’s from 1.8 to 1.7, while Kerala’s stayed at 1.8.

A legal argument runs alongside. Article 368 requires ratification by at least half the State legislatures for any amendment that changes “the representation of States in Parliament.” Two lawyers writing in LiveLaw on 16 April 2026 argued that a change to how seats are shared falls under that proviso. How amendments pass is explained in our guide to Article 368, and the wider balance between the Centre and the States in A Union of States.

What happened in Parliament in April 2026

Three bills were introduced in the Lok Sabha on 16 April 2026. The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill would have raised the ceiling to 850 members, 815 from the States and 35 from the Union territories. It would also have removed the freeze from Article 82 and let Parliament decide by law when delimitation happens and which census it uses.

The companion Delimitation Bill, 2026 set the census as the latest one published when the commission is formed, which PRS reads as 2011. The commission would have a chairperson who is or was a Supreme Court judge, the Chief Election Commissioner or a nominated Election Commissioner, and the State Election Commissioner of the State concerned. PRS also noted that the Rajya Sabha’s ceiling of 250 would stay unchanged, which would move the ratio of Lok Sabha to Rajya Sabha seats from about 2.2 to 1 to about 3.3 to 1. The upper House has its own guide.

On 17 April the 131st Amendment Bill got 298 votes to 230 against, The South First reported. A constitutional amendment needs two-thirds of the members present and voting, and Drishti IAS puts that benchmark at 352 with 528 members voting. PRS lists the Bill as negatived and the Delimitation Bill as “infructuous”, with no vote recorded on it. The Parliamentary Affairs Minister said the other two bills were linked to it and would not be taken forward, according to The South First. The text of Articles 81 and 82 is unchanged.

The women’s reservation clock runs through the same census

The 106th Amendment passed the Lok Sabha on 20 September 2023 with 454 votes for and 2 against, and the Rajya Sabha unanimously the next day. It reserves one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha, the State Assemblies and the Delhi Assembly for women, including within the seats already reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The reservation lasts 15 years and the reserved seats rotate after each delimitation, PRS records.

The Act took effect on 16 April 2026 by a gazette notification, The Wire reported. Its reservation starts only after the figures of the first census taken after that date are published and a delimitation follows. PRS wrote on the day the 2026 bills were introduced that, with the next Lok Sabha election due in 2029, a delimitation based on the 2027 census is unlikely to be finished before it, so the reservation would not apply to that election.

The Statement of Objects and Reasons gave exactly that delay as the reason for the 131st Amendment Bill. Opposition parties backed women’s reservation but objected to linking it with delimitation, The South First reported, and almost all parties of the INDIA bloc opposed that approach.

The census that starts the clock

Census 2027 is the 16th Indian census and the 8th since independence, and the first to be carried out digitally, the Press Information Bureau says. The Government notified its intention in the Gazette of India on 16 June 2025. The census due in 2021 could not be held on schedule because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first phase, houselisting and housing, runs between April and September 2026, in a 30-day window each State and Union territory chooses, preceded by an optional 15-day period of self-enumeration online. The second phase, the count of people, is scheduled for February 2027 and includes caste enumeration. The reference date is 00:00 on 1 March 2027, and 1 October 2026 for Ladakh and the snow-bound parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, which are counted in September 2026.

After the results are published, Article 82 needs a law from Parliament to say who readjusts the seats and how. The last exercise, by comparison, began with a commission formed in 2002 and ended with orders finalised in 2008. The Press Information Bureau’s note says the aim is to publish census data in the shortest possible time and gives no date for the results.