List of constituencies of the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly
There are 81 constituencies of the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly, the unicameral legislature of the state of Jharkhand in Eastern India. Its seat is at Ranchi, the capital of the state, and it sits for a term of five years unless it is dissolved early. Jharkhand is India's fourteenth largest state by population and the fifteenth largest by area.
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. Jharkhand's constituencies are single-seat ones, and they each directly elect a representative based on a first past the post election.
Jharkhand was formed in 2000 when the state of Bihar was split after the passage of the Bihar Reorganisation Act, 2000. Its legislative assembly was formed out of the 81 constituencies that were in the new state. 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. When the first delimitation happened in Jharkhand, based on the 2001 census, it was found that the number of seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes was going to be reduced from 28 to 21. This led to wide-spread protests in the state, leading to the President of India passing an order which meant that the 2006 delimitation would not be implemented in the state of Jharkhand. According to the 2011 census of India the Scheduled Castes constitute, while the Scheduled Tribes constitute 26.2% of the population of the state. The Scheduled Castes have been granted a reservation of 9 seats in the assembly, while 28 constituencies are reserved for candidates of the Scheduled Tribes.