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‘Nothing like this’: Tehsildar rebuts Mehbooba Mufti on registering non-locals
PDP president Mehbooba Mufti asked the administration to clarify on reports that the Baramulla tehsildar issued verbal instructions for registering non-local workers and central security personnel as voters
SRINAGAR: Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday accused a Baramulla district official of ordering employees to enrol workers from outside the state and central security personnel in the district’s voters’ list, prompting a quick rebuttal by the official.
In a tweet, the former chief minister said there were reports that a tehsildar in the district issued verbal instructions to enrol migrant workers and asked the administration “to come clean on this”.
“According to reports, verbal orders were passed at an administrative meeting in Baramulla yesterday by the district tehsildar to enrol non-local labourers, CISF, CRPF, BSF & army personnel as voters. Administration must come clean on this,” Mehbooba Mufti said in a post on Twitter.
Baramulla tehsildar Kifayat Ali said he did chair a routine meeting on Monday but insisted that no such instructions were issued.
“There is nothing like that. Let them (Mehbooba Mufti) come up with proof supporting their statement,” the Kashmir Administrative Service (KAS) officer said, describing the former chief minister’s statement as baseless.
Mehbooba Mufti’s tweet comes against the backdrop of political parties in the Kashmir Valley expressing concern at the possibility of the Election Commission enrolling people who were not the original inhabitants of the Valley in the voters’ list.
The trigger for the apprehension was a statement by the Jammu and Kashmir chief electoral officer, Hirdesh Kumar Singh on August 17 that the poll watchdog expected nearly 2.5 million new voters to register during the special summary revision of electoral rolls. Singh also said that many people who could not vote in previous elections would also be entitled to register as voters if they are ordinarily resident in Jammu and Kashmir. “Therefore, to become a voter, a person doesn’t need to be a permanent resident of J&K and he doesn’t need to be domicile as well,” Singh said at the media briefing in August.
The top election official’s statement stirred a hornet’s nest in J&K, especially since this will be the first election after the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status. Mehbooba Mufti had then termed it the “last nail in the coffin of electoral democracy” and alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was trying to ‘change demography’ in the Valley to ‘bring 2.5 million outside votes through the backdoor’.
However, the J&K government’s Directorate of Information and Public Relations later issued a clarification in a statement saying that the revision of electoral rolls will cover existing residents of the union territory. “(The) increase in numbers will be of voters who have attained the age of 18 years as on 1.10.2022 or earlier,” said the statement.
On Monday also, Hirdesh Kumar Singh convened a meeting of all political parties and assured them that their fears were misplaced and that the figure of new voters in this election was in the context of people who attained 18 years of age after January 1, 2019 when the last such exercise was carried out.
