Kashmiri leaders flay proposed delimitation
The draft of the Commission states that nine seats have been proposed for Schedule Tribes and seven for Scheduled Castes in Jammu and Kashmir.
Delimitation means redrawing of boundaries of an Assembly or Lok Sabha seat to represent changes in population over time. This exercise is carried out by a Delimitation Commission, whose orders have the force of law and cannot be questioned before any court. The objective is to redraw boundaries (based on the data of the last Census) in such a way so that the population under all seats, as far as practicable, is the same throughout the state. Apart from changing the limits of a constituency, the process may also result in changes in the number of seats in a state.
Five Jammu and Kashmir Members of Parliament-Farooq Abdullah, Mohammad Akbar Lone and Hasnain Masoodi (all of National Conference) and Jitendra Singh and Jugal Kishore Sharma of the Bharatiya Janata Party, were called by the Commission for a meeting today in Delhi They have been asked to submit their suggestions by the end of the month.
The National Conference (NC), the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), People’s Conference and Jammu and Kashmir Party are among the parties opposing the delimitation proposal.
Omar Abdullah, NC Vice-President and former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, tweeted, “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,” he tweeted.
Abdullah stated that it is deeply disappointing that the Commission appears to have allowed “the political agenda of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)” to dictate its recommendations rather than the data which should have been its only consideration. According to Abdullah, contrary to the promised “scientific approach, it is a political approach”.
Omar Abdullah’s another tweet stated, “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.”
Another former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti, President of People’s Democratic Party tweeted, “My apprehensions about the Delimitation Commission werent misplaced. They want to pitch people against each other by ignoring the population census & preposing 6 seats for one region & only one for Kashmir. This commision 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 and unconstitutional decisions of August 2019.”
Rejecting the proposal, the Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP) tweeted, “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 tweeted.
Although the Commission was asked to finish the delimitation in a year, it was granted a year’s extension on March 4 this year after the panel members said they couldn’t make much progress due to the Covid-induced lockdown across the country.
As per the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill, the number of Assembly seats in J&K would increase from 107 to 114, which is expected to benefit the Jammu region.