In 2023, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the completion of the 'delimitation' process in Assam – redrawing electoral constituencies in a way that can only be called absurd.

The process has not only visibly reshaped the state's electoral geography, but also changed the dynamics of political representation in the Lok Sabha election in 2024 and the more recent assembly election on 9 April.

The process remains opaque and arbitrary, reflecting a larger problem with India's data collection regimes and privacy norms. Worse, the Assam delimitation model may not be replicated elsewhere in the country.

In this episode, Srinivas Kodali, a Cyberabad-based digital researcher and activist, decodes the political and technical haze behind the process.

Read his recent article on the issue, which also includes detailed maps of the reordered constituencies in Assam: https://thewire.in/politics/the-delimitation-of-assam-makes-no-geographical-sense-and-permanently-divides-people Following are shareable raw files of the delimited constituency maps that Kodali has manually created out of the non-machine readable maps published by the ECI: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DyMfcfJwbicSJhksBR-Q-Xut7q6iMlGNDo also read his 2023 article on critical amendments to the Registration of Births and Deaths Act: https://thewire.in/tech/registration-of-births-deaths-aadhaar-voter-id

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