The Tamil Maanila Congress (M) has announced that it will not participate in the all-party meeting called by the Tamil Nadu government on March 5. The party leader and former Union Minister G.K. Vasan stated that the meeting was an attempt to divert people’s attention from the various unresolved issues in the state. Chief Minister Stalin defended the need for the meeting, stating that delimitation poses a significant threat to Tamil Nadu’s representation in Parliament. State BJP president K. Annamalai accused CM Stalin of spreading “imaginary and baseless fears” regarding the delimitation process. He said that if CM Stalin was concerned about Tamil Nadu losing parliamentary seats due to delimitation, he should have directed the 39 MPs from the INDIA bloc to raise the issue during the Budget session of Parliament. The meeting will be attended by all 40 political parties registered with the Election Commission of India to discuss this crucial issue, CM Stalin said. He warned that if delimitation is carried out based solely on population, Tamil Nadu could lose up to eight Lok Sabha seats, reducing its representation from 39 to 31 MPs. Even if the overall number of MPs in the country increases, Tamil Tamil could still be at a disadvantage due to proportional redistribution, he argued.
