Increase Lok Sabha seats

Increase Lok Sabha seats

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-II- Polity

In News

• Former President Pranab Mukherjee made a case for raising the number of Lok Sabha constituencies to 1,000 from the existing 543 and for a corresponding increase in the Rajya Sabha’s strength, 
• He argued that India has a “disproportionately large size” of electorate for elected representatives and thus needs expansion of Parliament
• The last time the strength of the 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, and there is a ‘strong case’ to remove the freeze in the delimitation exercise. It should be ideally increased to 1,000,