Kashmir share dips in new J&K election map
NEW DELHI/JAMMU: A panel redrawing poll constituencies in Jammu & Kashmir finalised the Union territory’s new electoral map on Thursday, concluding the controversial exercise and paving the way for elections in the region for the first time since its special status was scrapped.
The three-member delimitation commission issued its final order, earmarking 43 seats to the Hindu-majority Jammu region and 47 to Muslim-majority Kashmir – making up a total of 90 seats for the Union territory’s assembly, up from the current strength of 83. Out of the seven new seats added, six were allotted to Jammu and one to Kashmir. Earlier Jammu had 37 seats and Kashmir 46. This brings the Kashmir representation down to 52.2% from 55.4% of the total seats, and takes the Jammu representation up to 47.8% from 44.6%. The exercise was carried out on the basis of 2011 Census, which put the population of J&K at 12.5 million, with 56.2% in Kashmir and 43.8% in Jammu.
For the first time, the panel reserved nine seats for scheduled tribes, reorganised some Lok Sabha constituencies while keeping their total number at five, renamed some assembly constituencies, and redrew some others. All Lok Sabha constituencies now comprise 18 assembly segments each. It also recommended that members be nominated from Kashmiri migrant communities, which primarily comprises Kashmiri Pandits who were displaced at the peak of militancy in the 1990s.
“It was ensured by the commission that every assembly constituency shall be contained entirely in one district and the lowest administrative units i.e. patwar circles (and wards in Jammu Municipal Corporation) were not broken and were kept in a single assembly constituency,” said the panel.
The panel’s order, which came after 26 months of deliberation and was notified by the Union government on Thursday, was opposed by several political parties in Kashmir who said that the BJP and its proxies will be punished by voters whenever
elections are held. In a tweet, the National Conference (NC) said it was studying the impact of the commission report on individual assembly segments in the UT but “no amount of gerrymandering will change the ground reality”.
“We are studying the implications of these recommendations for individual assembly constituencies,” NC tweeted. “No amount of gerrymandering will change the ground reality which is that whenever elections are held the voter will punish the BJP & its proxies for what they have done to J&K over the last 4 years,” it added.
J&K lost its special status and statehood on August 5, 2019,
when the Centre moved to void Article 370 of the Constitution. At a landmark all-party meeting in June last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told leaders of political parties that statehood will be restored after fresh elections are held in the region, on the basis of the delimitation process.
But parties from the region, which remains bitterly opposed to the scrapping of its special status, want statehood to be restored before delimitation and elections – a demand rejected by the Centre. Assembly seats in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir were last redrawn in 1995, based on the 1981 Census.