The Constitution (Eighty-fourth Amendment) Act, 2001 is a constitutional amendment that primarily deals with the delimitation of parliamentary and assembly constituencies in India. It was enacted to extend the freeze on the total number of seats in the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies, which was originally imposed by the 42nd Amendment Act of 1976. The original freeze, based on the 1971 Census, was set to expire in 2000.
The amendment was created to solve the problem of states that had successfully implemented population control measures potentially losing political representation, as seat allocation is based on population. By extending the freeze, the government aimed to encourage population stabilisation across all states. The Act, which received Presidential assent on February 21, 2002, works by amending several articles, including Article 81 and Article 170, to substitute the year "2000" with "2026". This provision ensures that the total number of seats in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies remains fixed until the first census conducted after the year 2026.
However, the Act did permit the readjustment and rationalisation of territorial constituencies within each state, without altering the total number of seats, based on the population figures of the 1991 Census. This provision for internal readjustment was subsequently changed by the 87th Amendment Act of 2003, which mandated the use of the 2001 Census for the purpose of redrawing constituency boundaries and allocating seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The core freeze on the total number of seats until 2026 remains the central, unchanged provision of the 84th Amendment.