Equal representation or federal equity? Constitutional challenges of India's post-2026 delimitation under Article 82

When India's five-decade freeze on legislative seat allocation expires with the 2026 census, the ensuing delimitation will force a choice the Constitution has so far deferred: between the equal-suffrage command of "one person, one vote" and the federal-equity claims of states that curbed their populations and now face reduced representation. This paper asks how that choice should be made, and whether the government's proposal to expand the Lok Sabha by roughly half resolves it. Combining doctrinal legal analysis with an illustrative, reproducible seat-allocation model and a comparison with four mature federations, it advances two arguments. First, India is distinctive among large federations in lacking a structural counterweight to population unlike the second chambers of Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United States, its Rajya Sabha is itself largely population-based, so the entire North-South tension loads onto Lok Sabha delimitation. Second, seat expansion is necessary but not sufficient: it prevents absolute seat loss but not relative marginalisation, and a durable settlement requires either a weighted-equity allocation or a rebalanced second chamber, each achievable only by constitutional amendment. The paper specifies such a weighted formula, tests it against the equal-suffrage guarantee of Article 81, and assesses the political and institutional feasibility of the alternatives. It contributes a comparative diagnosis of India's federal-equity deficit and a substantiated, feasibility-tested reform pathway for one of the most consequential constitutional questions of the post-2026 period.