PMK to take part in all-party meeting on March 5 to discuss delimitation issue

CHENNAI:Assuring the State government that PMK will support every measure to prevent any reduction of Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu, party founder S Ramadoss announced that it will take part in the all-party meeting convened on March 5 to discuss the issue.

In a statement, the senior leader said that there is an apprehension in the State about the delimitation based on population. "I have been demanding to increase the Lok Sabha seats to 1,000. The reason for the demand is to send more representatives to the Parliament. But, there are reports saying that the delimitation will be based on population and the number of Lok Sabha constituencies in Tamil Nadu would be reduced to 32 or 31," he said.

Saying that carrying out delimitation as per population is not correct, Ramadoss pointed out that the southern states have successfully controlled population growth. "This benefitted the State and the entire country. As a reward, the seats should be increased in southern states instead of reducing them. Moreover, delimitation based on population amounts to punishing the southern states for successfully controlling the population growth rate," he added.

He further said that the clarification given by Union Minister Amit Shah was not clear. He opined that if the number of Lok Sabha seats were increased to 721, the number of seats for Tamil Nadu should be increased to 52, and if the number of constituencies was fixed at 888, the seats for Tamil Nadu should be increased to 64.

"In short, the representation of Tamil Nadu should be maintained at 7.20 per cent. PMK will support all the steps taken by the State government to safeguard the representation in this regard," he said.

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