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 allocated to each state in the Lok Sabha and the State Legislative Assemblies. The Act received the President's assent on February 21, 2002.
The origin of the Act lies in the need to prevent states that successfully implemented population control policies from being penalized with a reduction in their political representation. The original freeze was imposed by the 42nd Amendment Act of 1976, which used the 1971 Census figures and was set to expire in the year 2000.
The key mechanism of the 84th Amendment was to amend Article 81 and Article 170 to extend this freeze on the total number of seats until the publication of the first census after the year 2026. This meant the total number of seats in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies would continue to be based on the 1971 Census population figures. However, the Act also amended Article 82 and Article 170 to allow for the internal readjustment and rationalisation of territorial constituencies within a state, without altering the total number of seats, using the population figures of the 1991 Census.
The Act connects directly to the 42nd Amendment (1976), which first froze the seats. It was subsequently modified by the 87th Amendment Act of 2003, which replaced the 1991 Census base for the internal readjustment of territorial constituencies and the determination of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes with the 2001 Census figures. The current freeze on the total number of seats remains in effect until after 2026, a provision that is also relevant to the implementation of the 106th Constitutional Amendment Act, 2023 (Women's Reservation).