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Carry out exercise in free, fair manner: NC, Cong to J&K delimitation panel
Besides political leaders, the commission will be holding talks with district officials and other stakeholders on the ongoing process of carving out new constituencies in the region
Leaders of different mainstream political parties on Tuesday met the Delimitation Commission soon after its members arrived in Srinagar, beginning their four-day J&K tour.
Besides political leaders, the commission will be holding talks with district officials and other stakeholders on the ongoing process of carving out new constituencies in the region. Leaders of the National Conference (NC), the People’s Conference, the CPI, the CPI(M), the Panthers Party, the Congress, the BJP, the Apni Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party met the commission at Hotel Lalit.
Former SC judge Ranjana Prakash Desai heads the commission that was constituted in March 2020 to redraw the Lok Sabha and assembly constituencies of J&K, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, and Nagaland. The commission has nearly nine months left to complete the exercise. It will also carve out constituencies to be reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for the first time in J&K.
The issue of delimitation was discussed at PM Narendra Modi’s meeting with political leaders from Jammu & Kashmir on June 24.
The commission arrived in Srinagar a day after the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration said it was disappointed over the outcome of the all-party meeting with the PM. The alliance had demanded the restoration of the region’s statehood before elections were conducted. It also criticised the lack of ‘confidence-building measures’.
A five-member NC delegation that met the commission told them the exercise should have been done after elections and termed it ‘unconstitutional’ based on the Reorganisation Act that has been challenged in the Supreme Court.
“We told them that people in J&K have lost faith on institutions, so this should be done on transparent basis as people have lot of apprehensions. New constituencies should be created on the basis of population and nothing else,” said NC’s provisional president Nasir Aslam Wani.
Sofi Yusuf, who led the BJP delegation, said, “We told them that delimitation should be done on the basis of merit and due to huge population of Schedule Tribes, nine to 10 assembly segments should be kept reserved for them. Also, we told them that previous delimitation had helped a few political families of J&K, which shouldn’t happen this time.”
Jammu & Kashmir Congress chief Ghulam Ahmad Mir said, “The commission members told us that the process will be transparent based on the suggestions of different political parties. We believe this should have been done in 2026 along with the entire country with the new Census.” Mir said, “We didn’t give any suggestion to them as we feel this process is not legal.”
Apni Party leader Rafi Mir said they had a fruitful interaction with the commission.
People’s Conference spokesperson Adnan Ashraf said the party’s delegation told the commission that there were rumours that the aim of the delimitation was to disempower people in Kashmir. “The number of seats in each district should be based on population,” he added.
Meanwhile, CPI (M) delegation told the commission that whatever happened on August 5, 2019 was unacceptable. “These decisions have dented the confidence level of people of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh regions. We are not against delimitation, but wanted it to be carried along with rest of the country,” party’s J&K secretary Ghulam Nabi Malik said.
