Every delimitation fear compresses into one sentence: "my state will shrink." The floor clause is the two lines drafted to kill that sentence — no state's absolute seat count falls below its current strength, ever, under the new schedule.
The mechanism is expansion. A 543-seat house rebalancing to population would take seats from the south to feed the north; an 850-seat house adds all growth on top. Tamil Nadu keeps its 39; Uttar Pradesh grows. Nobody's column goes down.
What the clause cannot fix is proportion — 39 of 850 weighs less than 39 of 543 — which is why the southern argument, as our delimitation editorial argued, has shifted from sabotage claims to dilution mathematics. That is progress: dilution can be negotiated; sabotage can only be shouted.
The TDP's review clause adds a safety valve: the allocation formula returns to Parliament after two censuses. Permanent settlements frighten everyone; renewable ones get signed.
The committee's hardest homework remains weighted-representation drafting. But the floor clause already did its job: it moved the fight from the street to the drafting table. Context on our politics desk.
