India’s delimitation and seat reapportionment process has been frozen for the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies since 2008, which was conducted based on the 2001 census. In the meantime, population growth and migration have substantially altered the demographics of various regions and constituencies, materially affecting the equality of voting power enshrined by the Indian Constitution. Several scholarly articles have already highlighted the malapportionment issue in India, but an examination of this problem from an individual voter’s rights perspective has been lacking. Using a data-driven approach to establish the derogation of the ‘One Person, One Vote’ principle in India, we examine the constitutional sanction of equal suffrage and whether a departure from the same is permissible. Delimitation freezes, whether legally sanctioned or arising through mere executive inaction, do not pass a fundamental rights scrutiny under Article 14 and thus may not be permissible as a policy. While there is significant merit to the assertion that executive discretion should not be unduly fettered in this regard, this prerogative cannot extend to the subordination of citizens’ rights to political exigencies. Such a situation must be redressed to maintain the constitutional vision of democracy. We find that the established judicial precedent, both in domestic and foreign jurisdictions, aligns in favour of judicial intervention for the protection of effective voting rights from passive malapportionment.
