Increasing strength of Parliament to 850 a 'joke', says Tharoor

Participating in the Stanford India Conference 2026 in California on Sunday, BJP leader Tejasvi Surya argued that delimitation was a democratic necessity to ensure more accountability from elected representatives and termed it absurd to allow composition of Parliament to remain frozen in time at 543 the current strength of the Lok Sabha.

Increasing the strength of Parliament's lower house to 850 is a ''joke'', Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has said, contending that it would turn it into a 'desi' version of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference, which was countered by BJP leaders. Participating in the Stanford India Conference 2026 in California on Sunday, BJP leader Tejasvi Surya argued that delimitation was a ''democratic necessity'' to ensure more accountability from elected representatives and termed it ''absurd'' to allow composition of Parliament to remain frozen in time at 543 – the current strength of the Lok Sabha. ''The 1971 population cannot cater to a democracy of 140 crore people in 2026,'' Surya, the Lok Sabha MP countered Tharoor, who cited the example of the US Congress which continues to have a strength of 435 members since 1929. BJP leader K Annamalai said the delimitation exercise was a ''grand bargain'' between the north and south Indian states before the outcome of the ongoing Census is made public. Annamalai, the former Tamil Nadu BJP chief, said the total fertility rate of Tamil Nadu was among the lowest in India and once the census numbers are released, the north Indian states would naturally deserve a larger number of MPs. ''Now this is a grand bargain between the north Indian states and south Indian states to come to a definite conclusion to arrive at a number in which nobody is losing,'' he said. The three leaders were participating in the session titled 'India, That Is Bharat: Growth, Governance, and Identity' at the two-day conference organised by the Stanford India Policy and Economic Club. Tharoor, the Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, said a 850-member Lok Sabha chamber will become a ''desi version of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference where you just stand up when the great leader comes and thump your desks''. ''You won't have a chance to speak, argue, debate anything. 850 is a joke,'' Tharoor said. He said that the US population has tripled since 1929 and still the strength of the US House of Representatives has remained at 435 ''because they recognise that you cannot have a debating chamber of 850''. Tharoor, a member of the Congress Working Committee, said that the issue of women's reservation cannot be linked to delimitation and his party was ready to support reserving one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha for women as a standalone measure. ''Vote for it today. You can vote for it immediately. Don't link it to delimitation. Have one third reservation for women in today's parliament and we will all vote for it,'' the former Union minister said. Tharoor spoke in favour of waiting for the Census figures to be released between 2027 and 2029 and let that data lead to the delimitation. ''Probably around the time of the 2034 election, you'll have a new map of India, politically. Between roughly 2027 and 2034, you need to have a profound debate about the future shape of this country for the next 50 years,'' Tharoor said. Stressing on the urgency of the delimitation exercise, Annamalai said he gets to see his Lok Sabha member only in newspapers as he represents anywhere between 22-30 lakh voters. ''It is impossible for a common citizen to actually go and meet the MP and get things done. So, not just because it is a constitutional mandate, delimitation should be done once in 10 years. It is also a democratic necessity because in the existing framework, there is no question of accountability as far as the elected representative is concerned,'' Surya said. ''We want to make democracy accountable. We want to ensure that there is accountability between the voter and the elected and while doing all of this, we want to ensure that neither the North nor the South feels somebody has lost and somebody is unfairly given,'' said Surya, the president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP.