Mauritius Hands Out Eight Seats Based on a Census From 1972

Sixty-two seats are decided by voters across 21 constituencies — twenty on the main island return three members each, and Rodrigues Island returns two. The other eight come from a different math entirely. After every general election, the Electoral Supervisory Commission compares the ethnic mix of the winners to the ethnic mix of Mauritius itself, then awards up to eight 'Best Loser' seats to top-polling unsuccessful candidates from the most underrepresented communities. The system has been in the constitution since independence in 1968.

The baseline it measures against is the 1972 census. That census sorted Mauritians into four communities — Hindu, Muslim, Sino-Mauritian, and a residual 'General Population' that mostly covers Creoles and Franco-Mauritians — and the ratios it produced are the ones the formula still uses. To file as a candidate, you have to declare on your nomination paper which of the four you belong to. There has been no follow-up communal census; the boxes have stayed open and the country has kept ticking them.

The rationale, going back to the 1958 Trustram Eve commission, was that minorities had been getting locked out of single-member districts. Abdool Razack Mohamed of the Comité d'Action Musulman pushed for the corrective seats after no Muslim candidate won in 1948. Labour's Seewoosagur Ramgoolam backed him, and the formula survived independence intact.

In July 2012, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled in Narrain v. Mauritius that requiring candidates to declare their community to stand for office violated Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee told Mauritius to update the 1972 figures and reconsider whether a community-based system was still necessary. Parliament passed a temporary fix making the declaration optional, and the 1972 baseline kept running. As of the 2024 election, the eight seats were still allocated.