Draft proposes 1 more Assembly seat to Kashmir
In its first draft report-Paper -1, the Delimitation Commission for Jammu & Kashmir has proposed six additional seats for the Jammu region and one for the Kashmir valley after considering demographic changes in the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir.
The draft report has triggered strong protests from the National Conference, the Peoples’ Democratic Party, the People’s Conference and the Jammu Kashmir Apni Party. They have accused the commission of allowing the “political agenda of the BJP to dictate its recommendations”.
If the proposal goes through, the total seats in Jammu will increase to 43 from the existing 37 and in the Kashmir valley from 46 to 47. Of the total seats, the commission has proposed nine for the Scheduled Tribes and seven for the Scheduled Castes.
Apart from the 90 seats where the boundaries have been freshly demarcated, the 24 seats in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir remain unchanged.
Earlier at a meeting with five associate members, the Delimitation Commission headed by (Retd) Ranjana Prakash Desai, shared the draft report of the redrawing of boundaries of the Jammu & Kashmir and sought their comments/suggestions by December 31, 2021.
The meeting was held at Ashok Hotel on Monday, and attended by associate members, Jugal Kishore and Dr Jitendra Singh of the BJP and three MPs from the National Conference — Farooq Abdullah, Justice (Retd) Hasnain Masoodi and Mohammad Akbar Lone. This is the first time the NC attended the delimitation commission meeting. Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Chandra Bhushan Kumar gave a detailed presentation to the members explaining that the Delimitation panel has categorised all 20 districts in three broad categories A, B and C.
The commission gave a margin of +/- 10 per cent of average population per Assembly Constituency (AC), while proposing allocation of the constituencies to the districts.
The commission has also, for some districts, proposed carving out of an additional constituency to balance the representation for geographical areas having inadequate communication and lack of public conveniences due to their inhospitable conditions on the international border.
Bhushan further explained that in the Union Territory, since last delimitation, number of districts has increased from 12 to 20 and number of tehsils from 52 to 207.
The population density in the districts of the Union Territory varies from 29 persons per square km in Kishtwar to 3,436 persons per square km in Srinagar.
Mainstream political parties in Kashmir valley have strongly rejected the draft report and claimed it only served political interests of Bharatiya Janata Party.
The National Conference vice president and former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was among the first to react on his twitter time line. Omar said, “The draft recommendation of the J&K delimitation commission is unacceptable. Instead of adopting a scientific approach it seems it has adopted a ‘political approach’.”
Posting a series of tweets Omar wrote, “The draft recommendation of the J&K delimitation commission is unacceptable. The distribution of newly created assembly constituencies with 6 going to Jammu & only 1 to Kashmir is not justified by the data of the 2011 census. It is deeply disappointing that the commission appears to have allowed the political agenda of the BJP to dictate its recommendations rather than the data which should have been its only consideration. Contrary to the promised “scientific approach” it’s a political approach.”
MOS PMO, Dr Jitendra Singh, who attended the meeting in his capacity as BJP MP from Udhampur-Doda Parliamentary seat, backed the commission’s report.
“The commission has come out with a document that is objectively prepared. All associated members regardless of parties appreciated work done by Delimitation Commission. NC members were also satisfied by parameters followed by the Commission,” Dr Singh said while speaking to a Delhi based news agency.
In a swift response, the twitter handle of the JKNC posted a tweet saying Dr Singh gave a misleading statement.
“Misrepresenting and distorting the facts with malicious intention! Very misleading statement. We have clearly expressed our resentment over the draft of the Delimitation Commission, the biased process of seat sharing. The party will NOT be a signatory to this report.”
Former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and Chief of Peoples’ Democratic Party also reacted on her twitter time line saying, “My apprehensions about the Delimitation Commission were not misplaced. They want to pitch people against each other by ignoring the population census & proposing 6 seats for one region & only one for Kashmir.”
Mehbooba said, “This commission has been created simply to serve BJPs political interests by dividing people along religious & regional lines. The real game plan is to install a Government in J&K which will legitimise the illegal & unconstitutional decisions of August 2019.”
Another Kashmir-based APNI party said the recommendations were not acceptable to us.
“J&K Apni Party rejects the proposal of the delimitation commission. This is outrightly unacceptable to us. Apni Party demands a fair delimitation exercise without any bias, taking population and districts as the base. We strongly demand the GoI to intervene,” it said.
Sajad Lone’s Peoples Conference in a tweet said, “The recommendations of the delimitation commission are totally unacceptable. They reek of bias. What a shock for those who believe in democracy.”
