MANKACHAR — The Assam government has hailed the successful completion of its 2023 delimitation exercise in the South Salmara-Mankachar district, noting that the geographical isolation and chronic joblessness of the region are significantly easier to ignore now that they only require one representative to acknowledge them.

The administrative masterstroke, which merged two distinct constituencies into a single unit named Mankachar, has effectively streamlined the local grievance process. According to internal projections, by reducing the number of lawmakers from two to one, the state has achieved a 50% reduction in the volume of pesky requests for healthcare and infrastructure from the district’s 4.15 lakh voters.

“This is about administrative synergy,” explained a senior official from the state’s delimitation wing, speaking on condition of anonymity. “In the past, we had two different MLAs asking why the roads were washed away or why there were no hospitals. By merging them, we only have to listen to one person complain. It’s significantly more efficient for our afternoon tea schedule.”

The move follows a strategic 2022 decision to merge four districts just 24 hours before an Election Commission ban, a feat of timing that officials insist was a complete coincidence and had nothing to do with the fact that the 95% Muslim population in the region was consistently electing the wrong people.

Local residents, who have been labeled with various rhetorical flourishes ranging from 'indigenous' to 'infiltrator' depending on which way the wind blows in Dispur, expressed confusion as to how having less representation would fix the lack of jobs.

“We looked at the data,” the official continued, “and we realized that if we continued to have two seats here, we might have to actually address the geographical isolation. By making it one seat, we can classify the entire area as a ‘statistical anomaly’ and move on to more important matters, like renaming more stadiums.”

When asked about the 'infiltrator' rhetoric causing hurt among the 1951 NRC-verified residents, a spokesperson for the ruling alliance noted that 'hurt' is not a measurable KPI in the 2001 Census data currently being used to draw 2026 boundaries.

“The people of Mankachar should be proud,” the spokesperson added. “They have achieved the rare feat of becoming twice as compact and half as loud, which is exactly the kind of quiet we look for in a democracy.”