The south of India is drawing a thick red line. At an all-party meeting convened by Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin on March 5, leaders from across the state declared war against the upcoming delimitation exercise, calling it a calculated assault on their “political relevance”. Stalin warned that the plan, if executed on raw population figures, would punish the southern states for successfully controlling their birth rates, while rewarding the North that had not. Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah, Telangana’s A. Revanth Reddy, and Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan have voiced similar apprehensions, warning that a weaker parliamentary presence for the South would translate into diminished central allocations, further deepening the divisions between the two regions.