From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: The ball is set rolling for the process for elections in Jammu and Kashmir that is without an elected government since November 2018, with the Delimitation Commission on Thursday releasing its final report, redrawing the electoral map of Jammu and Kashmir, to increase more seats to Jammu in the 90-member Assembly.
The Kashmir valley, however, still have an upper hand with 47 seats as against 43 in Jammu. In the dissolved State Assembly, Kashmir had 46 seats and Jammu 37 while the separated Ladakh union territory had other 4 seats. The old J&K state used to also have notional 24 seats for the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and a legislative council which was junked by the government at the time of removal of the special status to J&K.
There will be five parliamentary constituencies, having an equal number of 18 Assembly seats each for the first time. Another first is creation of nine seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes (ST), 6 of them in the Jammu region and 3 in the valley. Names of some constituencies have been also changed on the demand of the local representatives. Tagmarg as Gulmarg, Zoonimar as Zaidibal, Sonwar as Lal Chowk, Padder as Padder-Nagseni, Kathua north as Jasrota, Kathua South as Kathua, Khour as Chhamb, Mahore as Gulabhgarh, and Drhal as Budhal.
The commission has also recommended additional seats in the assembly for Kashmiri migrants and displaced persons from Pakistan occupied J&K.
The Delimitation Commission, headed by Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, and Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra and state election commissioner K K Sharma s its ex-officio members, held a meeting here on Thursday to finalise the delimitation order, which was also gazetted on Thursday.
It treated Jammu and Kashmir as a single entity for the purpose of delimitation. No assembly constituency overlaps two districts as all remain within the boundary of the concerned district.
An official statement said the delimitation commission took extreme care in identifying the seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, by working out the percentage of their population in each constituency.
