New Delhi, April 14 -- In 2026, India is supposed to go through a delimitation exercise to re-allocate seats in the Lok Sabha. It was originally mandated to take place every 10 years, after every census, to account for population changes arising from state-to-state differences in fertility rates and migration.

However, the political implications of delimitation are so serious that it became, like a caste census (last undertaken in 1931), the third rail of Indian politics. You touch it, you die. As a result, the delimitation exercise has not been carried out for over five decades. Now, after two generations of massive demographic changes from natural increase and migration, the associated political problems have become even more intractab...