While the government failed to garner the majority required to pass The Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty-First. Amendment) Bill, 2026, the debate on delimitation is far from over. With the constitutionally mandated freeze on delimitation set to expire once the figures from the first census taken after 2026 become available, the issue of delimitation must still be addressed with some urgency. However, unless the delimitation debate is rooted properly in its federal context, it risks becoming diverted into a north versus south fight, where regional concerns around economic disparity and identity are somewhat unfairly portrayed as being set against democratic best practices, like voter equality.To situate the delimitation debate in its proper context, it is important to highlight two aspects of the Indian polity. First, while the Constitution creates unitary citizenship, with citizens interacting directly with the Union through parliament, the strength of regional sentiment on the ground often means voters treat the state as their interlocutor with the Union. This gap – between how the Constitution imagines citizens and how citizens view themselves – creates a divergence in how citizens view concepts like “one vote, one value” and consequently, delimitation.Second, the centralising impulse contained in the Constitution, which concentrates power at the Union hardens this tendency to view the state as an interlocutor. Simply put, when power that should logically vest in the state, vests in the Union, representation at the Union becomes a necessity for the smooth functioning of the state.Constitutional citizenship and regional identityThe Constitution envisages unitary citizenship, where one vote is required to have, as far as possible, the same value across the entire nation. While the Constitution provides for regional political engagement through state and local elections, the national polity and the regional polity are compartmentalised. A citizen is represented in the Lok Sabha through their parliamentary constituency, not their state.For multiple reasons, both historic and structural, this has never truly percolated into the public imagination. In practice, citizens have continued to see their respective states as their primary polities and the Union as a second, larger polity that they engage with through their states. This redefines what “one vote, one value” comes to mean on the ground. While citizens still value the ideal of everyone, irrespective of gender, caste, religion or creed being entitled to the same vote, with the same value, within the borders of each state, they are unable to extend the same thinking across states.As a result, any reduction in the proportion of parliamentary seats from each state is seen primarily in terms of what it means for the state collectively, and not the individual voter. Periodic delimitation, which would be a move that promotes voter equality if one only had to consider the national polity becomes disenfranchising, if one considers, first and foremost, the role played by the state as an interlocutor between the people and the Union.The debate on delimitation therefore is not rooted in whether citizens theoretically accept principles like voter equality – most do. It asks a deeper question: Irrespective of the written structures of the Constitution, how do citizens on the ground interpret their polity? The answer is rooted in accepting and acknowledging the regional impulses that predate the Constitution and remain entrenched today.Regional impulses and the modern Indian stateSudipta Kaviraj argues that two contradictory impulses define the political history of India – the imperial impulse, which from time to time led to the formation of large empires with unified laws, and the regional impulse, which revolved around durable feelings that existed around definable regions. While the two impulses in the pre-modern period pulled against each other leading to cycles of empire formation and their disintegration into regional kingdoms, the post-colonial Indian state attempts to absorb and balance both impulses within itself.While the Constitution makes some allowances towards regional feeling, the balance of power between the Union and the states categorically leans towards the Union. When presenting the draft of the Constitution to the Constituent Assembly in November 1948, Dr B.R. Ambedkar describes centralisation as an inevitable byproduct of modernity. This belief was shared by Jawaharlal Nehru as well, whose vision of development through centralized planning, necessitated a concentration of power at the Union. This choice was not representative of a broad public consensus. It was carried through by the strength of the development logic that prevailed at the time.In the decades since the promulgation of the Constitution, a series of amendments have only exacerbated this tilt in the balance of powers in favour of the center. Encroachments by the Union into the limited legislative and executive spaces granted by the Constitution to the states have been the norm, and resistance to such encroachment, the exception.Centralisation however did not erase the existence of regional impulses on the ground. In parallel to, and at times as a response to this centralisation, regional impulses began to take new shape in the form of regional politics. The trajectory of regional politics in India has been interesting. While regional parties have collectively gained and maintained a substantial vote share, they have hitherto demonstrated little desire to take control of or reshape national political narratives.Parties who see their raison d’être as the protection of their specific regions from the Union have preferred instead to interact with the Union through the processes of negotiation. And in these negotiations, their proportions in parliament have been important. These negotiations and the resultant compromises (such as the linguistic reorganisation of states) have often effectively contained regional impulses within the national fold. These compromises might appear piecemeal, but have over time become collectively central to the unstated contract that reconciles states to their position in the Union. The delimitation freeze has come to be seen as one such compromise – it seeks to reconcile states to the concentration of power at the Union level, by freezing state representation in that Union, and putting it beyond the vagaries of demographic change.The deepening of fault linesThe non-formal centralisation of recent years has encroached further into the spaces of states. As the popularity of election campaign slogans like “double engine sarkar” tells us, the unspoken assumption is that for a state to get its due, it must elect the same party that is in power at the center. The recent rejection of key infrastructure projects in Tamil Nadu, the withholding of funds to force the introduction of Hindi in the curriculum, the excesses of BJP appointed governors, the manner in which ongoing SIR has been conducted and the nationwide dehumanization of Bengalis have shattered many illusions about the possibilities of cooperative federalism. The message to citizens has been clear – unless their state aligns politically, ideologically and culturally with New Delhi, its development, and even their own democratic rights can be derailed.The evolution of regional politics in response to this challenge has been interesting. Hitherto, the great democratisation of Indian politics, represented by the rise of regional parties, has not led to an overhaul of the imagination of the nation itself. At the centre, the core secular nationalism versus Hindutva nationalism debate has remained almost unaltered since 1947. Power has merely shifted from one side to the other. This is changing. In April 2025, the Tamil Nadu government constituted a high level committee to review Union-state relations in India.In February 2026, the committee (often called the Justice Kurian Joseph Committee) released the first part of its report, calling for a complete structural reset in Indian federalism “comparable in ambition to the economic reforms of 1991”. The report, which was circulated by the Tamil Nadu government to other Chief Ministers, has received interesting responses. In a letter welcoming the report, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, reiterated that the federal compact “must evolve from hierarchical supervision to collaborative partnership”.The Justice Kurian Joseph Committee, and the discussions that surround it, offer a hint of what the idea of India, when reimagined, not from the perspective of New Delhi but from the perspective of its states could look like. It throws up entirely different constitutive principles – where the strength of the Union derives not from centralised homogeneity but from decentralisation, diversity, and negotiated accommodation.What this means for delimitationHistorically, fears about secession have tended to shut down discussions on federalism, especially in New Delhi. The discussion on federalism being suggested by the Justice Kurian Joseph Committee today however deserves more attention. It is certainly not framed as a threat. Rather, it offers the chance to reframe the regional impulse as a force that can strengthen the nation instead of treating it as something that must be kept contained. This is perhaps an idea that is overdue.Centralisation is no longer seen as an economic necessity in the manner that it was at independence. And while piecemeal negotiations between the Union and the states have been successful, they have also led to the sort of conceptual messiness the plagues the delimitation debate today. The need of the hour therefore is to open a more fundamental discussion between the Union and the states on the future of federalism in India.Delimitation must naturally be seen as a part of this broader discussion. When the powers needed to govern states come to vest at the level of the state instead of the Union, the manner in which the citizen views the Union parliament will also change. When that happens, delimitation will return to being a more routine administrative exercise, devoid of federal controversy.Sarayu Pani is a lawyer by training and posts on X @sarayupani.Missing Link is her column on the social aspects of the events that move India.