Constituencies of Mauritius

Constituencies of Mauritius are the electoral boundaries within the Republic of Mauritius. The country follows the Westminster system and elects sixty members of parliament for a term of five years. There are in all twenty-one constituencies in the republic, each of them returning three members with the exception of Constituency No 21, which returns only two members. The constitution stipulates in there shall be twenty constituencies and one created specially for the Rodrigues island.

Those electoral boundaries are considered to be the main pillars for elections as they allow members of parliament to be elected and thus to form the government. As mentioned in the constitution, the Electoral Boundaries Commission shall review the boundaries of the constituencies at such times as will enable them to present a report to the Assembly 10 years, as near as may be, after 12 August 1966 and, thereafter, 10 years after presentation of their last report.

The report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission shall make recommendations for any alterations to the boundaries of the constituencies as appear to the Commission to be required so that the number of inhabitants of each constituency is as nearly equal as is reasonably practicable to the population quota that is the number of inhabitants of a constituency may be greater or less than the population quota in order to take account of means of communication, geographical features, density of population and the boundaries of administrative areas.

Before 1967, according to the previous (pre-independence) Constitution, Mauritius was divided into 40 constituencies from which a Member of Parliament (MP) was elected. Elected MPs would then elect a Chief Minister as well as Council Members.

Today, the constituencies still remain more or less the same but, ever since the new Constitution provided in 1992, many of the previously smaller 40 constituencies have been reorganised so as to now form a total of 21 constituencies.

The results showed a directly members would be including 24 MPs of Hindu community, 3 MPs elected from the Muslims, 1 MP elected from the sino-Mauritians and the 12 resting MPs were of Christian group. This affected the equality of representation thought ethnic groups which are considered as very sensitive subject and then government decided to amend the law and move it to a system of Best Loser.

The Best Loser System is a method used in Mauritius to make sure that the minorities ethnic groups are well and equitably represented in the parliament. Apart from 62 directly elected members, the constitution provides 8 additional seats which are allocated to the best losers who were candidates from the appropriate ethnic groups, namely the minorities. Minorities are mainly build of Christians and Muslims with a small percentage of Sino-Mauritian.

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