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For electoral purposes, the entire country is divided into geographical areas known as constituencies each returning one member to the Parliament or the State Assembly. There are two types of constituencies:
a) Parliamentary constituencies
b) Assembly constituencies.
Each parliamentary constituency consists of an integral number of assembly constituencies. This number varies from State to State. For the purpose of determining the number of seats to be allotted to the States in the Lok Sabha and the seats, if any, to be reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the total population of all the States is divided by the total number of seats in the House of the People. This gives the average population per seat. The population of each State is then divided by this number to arrive at the number of seats to be allotted to that State.
A uniformity of representation to Scheduled Castes ad Scheduled Tribes has also been ensured by stipulating that the number of seats reserved in any State or Union Territory for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes shall bear, as nearly as may be, the same proportion to the total number of seats allotted to that State or Union Territory in the House of the People as the population of the Scheduled Castes or of the Scheduled Tribes in the State or part of the State, as the case may be, in respect of which seats are so reserved, bears to the total population of the State or Union Territory.