The impending delimitation exercise and talk of adjusting parliamentary representation of States based on population has got Tamil Nadu, which scores high on population control, in a tizzy.

On Monday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin urged young couples to have children “immediately” after marriage. “Earlier we used to tell young couples to take their time and have a baby. But now, the situation has changed. You need to have babies sooner,” he said. “I say so because under the current delimitation proposal, a higher population will become a criteria to get more MPs for the state. We are here in this situation because we implemented family planning well,” he added. He was speaking at a wedding function of a DMK district secretary at Nagapattinam.

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All-party meeting

The CM said an all-party meeting of the State would be held on March 5 to discuss the issue. “Even with 39 seats we are struggling today, and if this reduces it will be a problem,” he added.

His comments come at a time when there is a fear among the Southern States that delimitation based purely on population as per the latest Census will be detrimental to the South, which has been more stringent in population control policies compared to the North.

Andhra Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu spoke last October about the crisis of an ageing population in Southern States and called on people to have more children. He also floated a proposal that individuals will only be eligible to contest elections for local body positions if they had more than two children.

Reacting to Union Minister Amit Shah’s clarifications that delimitation will not affect the seats of Southern States, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah also said that using latest population figures for delimitation would disadvantage Southern States. Telangana CM Revanth Reddy also noted that the South would “face injustice” if delimitation is carried out solely on population.

While India has a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 2.0 at the national level as per National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) 2019-21, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are among States with TFR lower than 1.8. In contrast, the average TFR of northern States such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan stands at 2.4.