On Monday, Ex-President Pranab Mukherjee pitched for raising the no. of Lok Sabha constituencies to 1,000 from the existing 543 & for a corresponding increase in Rajya Sabha's strength, arguing that India has a "disproportionately large size" of electorate for elected representatives. Delivering the second Atal Vihari Vajpayee memorial lecture organised by India Foundation here, Mukherjee said the last time the strength of Lok Sabha was revised was in 1977 which, he noted, was based on the 1971 census that put the total population at 55 crore.
The population since then has more than doubled, & there is a "strong case" to remove the freeze in the delimitation exercise. It should be ideally increased to 1,000, he added.
On the occasion, he also hailed Vajpayee as a consensus-builder who worked to take everyone along & noted that people may have given strong majorities to different parties since 1952 but over 50% of them have never voted for one party.
Ex-President said that "A numerical majority in elections gives you the right to make a stable Govt. The lack of popular majority forbids you from a majoritarian Govt. That is the message & essence of our parliamentary democracy".
Source Link
Picture Source :
