Committees reveal strategy through sequence, and the delimitation JPC's published witness calendar for its July 28 opening is a sequenced argument.
First: the Registrar General. Opening with census readiness makes the opposition's best procedural attack — "2027 is not feasible" — the first claim tested on record. If the field manual's timelines survive cross-examination, the timeline objection dies in week one.
Second: the Election Commission, on delimitation mechanics and the commission-composition question — the file where opposition demands for nominated members will meet the government's draft.
Third, deliberately last: the academics. The weighted-representation scholars whose formulas the southern parties cite arrive after the operational witnesses — abstractions scheduled to follow facts.
The published-summaries concession means each session lands in public within days, and both sides know the winter's op-eds are being drafted in that room. The DMK's constitutional lawyer gets the first cross-examination; treasury members, per one member's phrase, intend to "let the witnesses do the arguing."
December 19 sits at the end of this calendar like a verdict date. Gavel-to-gavel tracking on our politics desk.
