DW BUREAU / Chennai

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Saturday announced his state will vehemently oppose the "unfair, faulty, and undemocratic delimitation" being done by the BJP-led Union government "to muzzle the voice of the opposition parties".

"This shameful act of the BJP to reduce the seats in the states where they can't win is undemocratic and we won't allow the saffron party to succeed in its nefarious designs to weaken the democracy," said the Chief Minister while participating in a conference organised by his Tamil Nadu counterpart M.K. Stalin.

Chief Minister Mann said this arbitrary move of the Union government is just aimed at eliminating the Opposition parties by reducing the seats where the BJP is not able to win. He said that contrary to this, the BJP is trying its level best to enhance the seats in the Hindi belt where it gets most of the seats.

He said: "It is ironic that in the name of population density, the seats are being reduced in South Indian seats". The Chief Minister said as a fact of the matter, the southern states are being punished for zealously implementing population control programmes. He said it would not be a surprise if the BJP enhances the tally of seats in Uttar Pradesh from 80 to more than 140 after the delimitation.

Mann said the idea "is to bifurcate or even trifurcate the seats which are the stronghold of the saffron party and to carve out more winning seats from it".

Giving an example, the Chief Minister said the Lok Sabha seat earlier represented by him was Sangrur which comprised three districts - Sangrur, Barnala and Malerkotla. He said supposing this seat was the monopoly of the BJP, then as per their current designs, they would have trifurcated this seat in three and carved out Sangrur, Barnala, and Malerkotla as separate Lok Sabha seats. Mann said this is how the BJP intends to increase the Lok Sabha seats from 543 to 850 or more to consolidate its position.

The Chief Minister said the BJP "wants to eliminate the belts where they are weak and enhance the seats where they are strong". However, he said this "is intolerable, unwarranted and undesirable adding that it will be opposed tooth and nail".

He alleged that the BJP "wants to humiliate Punjab, which has made enormous sacrifices in the national freedom struggle, through this delimitation". He said currently the state has 13 Lok Sabha seats through which the share of Punjab in the temple of democracy is 2.39 per cent. However, Mann said the BJP "intends to increase Lok Sabha seats in the state to 18 but it will reduce the percentage of state's share to

2.11 per cent".

(editor@dailyworld.in)