According to Article 84 (1) (a) of the constitution, 165 members will be elected under the first-past-the-post system from the 165 electoral constituencies into which Nepal has been divided based on geography and population. This provision is no cause for panic if we consider the constitution as a broader guideline for governing the country. In fact, it is a common practice in all democracies, including in India and the US, to keep multiple aspects in mind while carving constituencies retaining population as the primary criterion.

Since the constitution has a provision for a Constituency Delimitation Commission, the agitating parties could have waited until it was formed. However, the Madhesi parties expressed strong doubts over the attitude of the mainstream leadership, and demanded that population-based proportional seats be allocated in the Tarai-Madhes.

Propositions under discussion

Currently, three proposals are being discussed in Nepal. One, population should be the only basis to determine electoral constituencies. This is considered to be one of the major demands of the Madhesi parties. If this proposal is accepted, the 20 districts in the Madhes will get almost 83 seats, and the population threshold will be 160,573 persons per constituency. The second proposal is about allocating seats to the provinces. And the third is applying a mixed method by taking both population and geography into account as suggested by the constitution. The third proposal recommends giving concessions to a number of hill and mountain districts so that they will have at least one constituency, and applying population as the basis for the rest of the districts.

Among the three proposals, the second one about allocating seats to the provinces would be presently unrealistic as the demarcation of the federal states is still being debated. The protesting parties also want to know how the seats will be allocated before they end the agitation. It is surprising that senior journalists and scholars from India and Nepal have been saying that the Madhes will get only 65 seats in Parliament as per the new constitution. Meanwhile, a few experts and politicians want to allocate 75 seats for the 75 districts and divide the remaining 90 seats based on population. This proposal, however, is too conservative.

The most popular proposal being discussed in Kathmandu is the third one under which districts whose population is lower than the threshold will get one seat each under a special provision. There are 18 such districts whose population is less than 160,573. They will get one seat each whatever their population, and the number of seats for the remaining 37 districts will be based on their population. Doing so will respect the sentiments of the people living in both  the hills and the plains. This formula neither ignores the anxiety of a huge geographical area without representation nor disregards the strength of the population and its representation. The 20 districts in the Madhes will get almost 80 seats and the other 37 districts will get 67 seats.

Way to resolve the controversy

Misinformed and biased perceptions on both sides seem to have made the issue of constituency delimitation more complicated than it should be. The feeling in the Tarai is that the 55 hill and mountain districts will enjoy all the benefits at the cost of the 20 Madhes districts if geography is considered as one of two criteria for constituency delimitation.

Manang district, which has the smallest population of 6,538, is often presented as an example to convince the masses against this proposition. But Kathmandu has not been able to explain that all the 18 districts which will get some concessions are not as small as Manang. There are districts like Sankhuwasabha which has a population of 158,742, Okhaldhunga 147,984, Parbat 146,590, Baitadi 142,094 and so forth. In fact, the total population 18 districts combined is 1,764,164, and they would get more than 10 seats on their own if population was used as the basis. This means that the total contribution they will need from the remaining 57 districts is merely seven to eight seats, including a maximum of three seats from the 20 districts in the Tarai.  

To conclude, the subject of constituency delimitation has drawn public attention after the Madhes demanded population-based delimitation during the Madhes Uprising in 2007. The then government, which was preoccupied with holding the election to the Constituent Assembly to consolidate the ongoing peace process, agreed to the demand and inserted a provision in the Interim Constitution. In addition, it was agreed that the number of seats would be determined according to the three geographical zones where the districts were located. The 14 Himalayan districts would get one seat each regardless of their population, and the remaining 41 hill districts and 20 Tarai districts would get seats based on their population.

Under this arrangement, the 41 hill districts would be the biggest losers. In other words, such a delimitation process woul have been beneficial to both the Madhes and Himalayan districts at the cost of the hill districts. The third proposal we have discussed seems to be a compromise for both Kathmandu and the Madhes—18 districts will get one seat each regardless of their population, and seats will be allocated to the remaining 57 districts based on their population. If the agitating parties and the government agree to apply this formula, there is no need to amend the constitutional provisions; the Constituency Delimitation Commission can give the final say.

Pyakurel teaches political sociology at Kathmandu University and Adhikari is the convener for South Asian Dialogues on Ecological Democracy