With the recommendations of the Fourth Delimitation Commission in 2008, the political map of the country has undergone significant changes. Lokniti has taken up the challenge to produce comprehensive information on these changes. Not only have the boundaries of existing constituencies changed but so has the political demography thereof. How would the constituencies now look like? To what extent has the political demography of constituencies changed? How far the changed scenario would affect the political actors? These are the questions that instantly occupy our thinking. Lokniti has taken up the challenge and constructed the socioeconomic profile of assembly and parliamentary constituencies based on the final delimitation plan of the Fourth Delimitation Commission (2002-08) through its Project Delimitation started in February 2008. The profile of constituencies consists of 22 variables derived from Census 2001. Some important variables include number of households, proportion of Muslims, SC, ST, urban, workers and literates. Lokniti is also planning to add basic amenities such as number of schools, health care facilities and so on in the second phase that is underway.
The objectives of the project are as follows:
| 1. |
To create maps of each assembly and parliamentary constituency; |
| 2. |
To prepare socio-demographic and economic profile of each constituency, and |
| 3. |
To assess the impact of boundary changes on political actors. |
After the data is collected, Stage II would be to engage GIS people to draw maps. The profiling exercise would indeed move parallel to the cartographic one. Once this exercise is done for a state, a demonstration and assessment of the output will follow. The project will then move to its third and final stage where it is proposed to put the output in public domain.
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