Increasing strength of Parliament to 850 a ‘joke’, says Tharoor
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said increasing the size of the lower house of Parliament to 850 was a “joke” and claimed it would turn into a ‘desi’ version of the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference, which is opposed by BJP leaders.
Participating in the Stanford India Conference 2026 in California on Sunday, May 10, 2026, BJP leader Tejasvi Surya argued that delimitation is a “democratic necessity” to ensure greater accountability from elected representatives and called it “absurd” to allow the composition of Parliament to remain frozen in time at the current strength of 543 in the Lok Sabha.
“The population of 1971 cannot afford a democracy of 140 crore people in 2026,” Mr. Surya, a Lok Sabha MP, told Mr. Tharoor, citing the example of the US Congress, which continues to have a strength of 435 members since 1929.
Before the results of the ongoing census are made public, BJP leader K. Annamalai said the delimitation exercise was a “grand bargain” between North and South Indian states.
Former Tamil Nadu BJP chief Mr Annamalai said the total fertility rate in Tamil Nadu was among the lowest in India and northern Indian states would naturally deserve a larger number of MPs when the census figures are released.
“Now this is a grand bargain between the North Indian states and the South Indian states to reach a definitive conclusion to reach a figure where no one will lose,” he said.
The three leaders attended the session titled ‘India, This Bharat: Growth, Governance and Identity’ at the two-day conference organized by the Stanford India Politics and Economics Club.
Mr Tharoor, the Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, said the 850-member Lok Sabha chamber would be “the desi version of the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference where you stand up and bang on your desks when the great leader comes”.
“You won’t get a chance to talk, discuss, discuss anything. 850 is a joke,” Mr. Tharoor said.
He said the U.S. population has tripled since 1929 and the strength of the U.S. House of Representatives still remains at 435 because “they recognize that we cannot have a debating chamber of 850 people.”
Mr. Tharoor, a member of the Congress Working Committee, said the issue of women’s reservation cannot be linked to delimitation and his party is ready to support reserving one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha for women as a standalone measure.
The former Union Minister said, “Vote today. You can vote immediately. Don’t make it limited. Give one-third reservation for women in today’s parliament and we will all vote for it.”
Mr. Tharoor spoke in favor of waiting for the Census figures to be released between 2027 and 2029 and let that data lead to containment.
“Possibly around the time of the 2034 elections, you will have a new map of India politically. Between about 2027 and 2034, you need to have a deep discussion about the shape of this country in the next 50 years,” Mr. Tharoor said.
Emphasizing the urgency of the delimitation exercise, Mr. Annamalai said that he could only see the Lok Sabha member in newspapers because he represented voters anywhere between 22-30 lakh.
Mr. Surya said, “It is impossible for an ordinary citizen to actually go and meet the MP and get things done. Therefore, delimitation should be done every 10 years, not just because it is a constitutional mandate. This is also a democratic obligation because in the current framework, there is no accountability on the part of the elected representative.”
“We want to make democracy accountable. We want to ensure that there is accountability between the voter and the elected, and in doing all this, we want to ensure that neither the North nor the South feels that one has lost and the other has been given unfairly,” said Mr. Surya, president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP.
It was published – 11 May 2026 06:55 IST
