List of constituencies of the Kerala Legislative Assembly
The Kerala Legislative Assembly is the unicameral legislature of the state of Kerala in South India. Its seat is at Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the state, and the assembly sits for a term of five years unless dissolved early. Kerala is India's fifteenth smallest state by population and the eighth smallest by area. The governance of the state over the last few decades has alternated between the communist-led Left Democratic Front and the Congress-led United Democratic Front.
Constituency boundaries are periodically redrawn by the delimitation commission which tries to keep them as geographically compact areas, and with due consideration to existing boundaries of administrative units. The lastest census is used to draw the boundaries and every assembly constituency has to be completely within a parliamentary constituency. Since the 1977 election, Kerala has had 140 single-seat constituencies, each of which directly elects a representative based on a first past the post election.
Since the independence of India from the United Kingdom in 1947, the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) have been given reservation status, guaranteeing political representation, and the Constitution lays down the general principles of positive discrimination for SCs and STs. According to the 2011 census of India, the Scheduled Castes constitute 9.1%, while the Scheduled Tribes constitute 1.5% of the population of the state. The Scheduled Castes have been granted a reservation of 14 seats in the assembly, while 2 constituencies are reserved for candidates of the Scheduled Tribes.