Amid the oft-repeated debate over whether northern states could benefit from future Lok Sabha expansion at the expense of the South, the historical record tells a more complex story. Between 1951 and 1977, when parliamentary seats were periodically reallocated following the census exercise, the share of Lok Sabha seats in both the Hindi belt and the southern states saw a decline. But the Hindi belt’s share fell much more – 3.1 percentage points, while the South’s declined by 1.2 points.The main reason was not the rise of the South over the North or vice versa, but the increased representation of the Union Territories and the increasing share of the Western and Eastern States. The comparison also needs to be read carefully: the map of India looked very different in 1951, before the linguistic reorganization of states. By 1956, the states were more or less in their present form, but at that time many union territories had little or no representation in the Lok Sabha.

Overall, the data shows that changes in parliamentary representation were shaped not only by the North-South balance, but also by state reorganisation, UT representation and the evolving federal map of India.