5 min readMay 30, 2026 06:50 AM IST First published on: May 30, 2026 at 06:50 AM ISTAfter the 2026 Census, the Lok Sabha could expand from 543 to 816 seats. Most of the discussion has focused on how the new seats will be distributed across states. We add a complementary question, drawing on our analysis of all the 2,171 parliamentary constituency (PC) elections held in India since 2009: How will delimitation affect voter participation?The 2024 general elections saw a turnout of 65.8 per cent — the second-highest of any Indian general election. However, urban turnout has been lagging. The fully built-up constituencies of Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and the NCR are touching turnout floors of 55 to 60 per cent, well below the national average. The rural-urban turnout gap, 4.4 percentage points in 2009, has gone up to 11.6 points in 2024.AdvertisementTwo changes have reshaped the geography of Indian voting. First, the long-observed pattern that big constituencies vote less than small ones — the “size penalty” — has vanished in the average data. In 2009, a 2-million-elector seat turned out 11 percentage points lower than a 1-million-elector one. By 2024, that gap is just 1.4 points.Second, the divergence in Indian voting now runs along urban-rural lines, with a sharp gendered twist. The woman voter in a large rural constituency is the most engaged — turnout around 75 per cent at two-million-elector seats. The woman voter who lives in a large urban area is the least engaged — turnout falls to about 64 per cent. As constituencies grow toward 3 million electors — a frontier several Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru seats are approaching — our model projects the rural-urban gap to widen to 22 percentage points for women and 16 for men.The polling station is the third piece of the picture. Booth crowding has always been more severe in urban constituencies than in rural ones. The EC’s station expansion between 2019 and 2024 brought modest relief at the urban end. But between 2019 and 2024, the rationalisation slipped: Stations grew only 1.3 per cent against 7.2 per cent growth in electors, pushing up urban crowding. The resulting 1.28-percentage-point national turnout decline is fully accounted for by this renewed booth crowding. Booth crowding deters male voters strongly — it explains 19.5 per cent of the male size penalty in our data — but has little direct effect on women’s turnout (3.4 per cent). For them, mobilisation works through different channels: Campaign, household and time-of-day flexibility, and direct engagement with collectives.AdvertisementWhy does all this matter for delimitation? Because the size penalty looks like it has disappeared on average, but at high urban shares, it has not. Our model predicts that a 2-million-elector urban constituency turns out at about 65 per cent; at 1 million electors, it predicts a turnout of about 74 per cent. Splitting a 2-million-elector urban PC into two 1-million-elector PCs would raise the turnout by roughly 9 percentage points per half. This is the strongest empirical case for the 543-to-816 expansion.What should the delimitation agenda then look like?Put the new seats where they will actually raise turnout. The biggest gains are in the band of urbanisation that runs through the suburbs of Bengaluru, Mumbai, NCR, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad and Chennai — constituencies that are 75 to 90 per cent urban, which have grown 46 per cent in electorate since 2009 (well above the 35 per cent national average) and where voters are turning out at the lowest rates. Targeted shrinkage of these large urban PCs is where the model predicts the largest turnout gains.Build the polling station capacity alongside. A ratio of below 900 voters per booth — the level achieved after the 2018 rationalisation — has to be locked in.you may likeBring urban women into the participatory fold. The rural channels that have historically mobilised women — panchayat networks, anganwadis, self-help groups — do not extend to cities like Mumbai or Bengaluru. The right urban tools include women’s canteen schemes, urban self-help-group networks under the National Urban Livelihoods Mission, women-only polling booths, and mobilisation by women councillors elected under the 74th Constitutional Amendment’s reservation provisions for urban local bodies.The next delimitation will also be the moment at which the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (the Women’s Reservation Act) comes into force. Delimitation that creates smaller urban constituencies in the band where female turnout is currently the lowest, layered with women candidates on the ballot under the new reservation, and paired with the operational and engagement infrastructure that brings urban women to the polling station, can substantially close the urban turnout gap among women voters.As India urbanises rapidly, the share of the electorate in metropolitan PCs will continue to rise. Whether that rising urban share translates into a falling national turnout, or into a renewed wave of female-urban participation, will be decided by what the Delimitation Commission chooses to do.The writer is member, EAC-PM