Differences between the three election commissioners led to the postponement of a decision on holding elections in Jammu & Kashmir.
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Sources close to the Election Commission (EC) said while commissioners Navin Chawla and S.Y. Quraishi were both keen on holding the poll in November-December, Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami preferred holding them along with the Lok Sabha polls next year.
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Given the renewed call for azaadi in the Kashmir valley in the last few months, a question mark hangs over the extent of popular participation any poll held there would draw. Gopalaswami is reported to have maintained that the ground situation would improve by next year leading to greater popular participation.
The other two commissioners, sources said, felt that postponing polls in that crucial state would send a wrong message worldwide, but Gopalaswami refused to budge.
Senior state and union home ministry officials have informed the EC that providing security would not be a problem, sources said. But Gopalaswami has publicly stated that factors ‘other than law and order’ would also influence the EC’s decision. “Boycott of the polls is our biggest worry,” a state EC official said.
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In case of a split verdict, the majority decision will prevail, but it is learnt that all three commissioners are reluctant to make their differences public. “Pros and cons are being considered,” said Quraishi. Gopalaswami was not available for comment.
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In case of a split verdict, the majority decision will prevail, but it is learnt that all three commissioners are reluctant to make their differences public. “Pros and cons are being considered,” said Quraishi. Gopalaswami was not available for comment.
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But the commission cannot wait too long to make up its mind. “Unless the dates are announced very soon, we will move into winter, considering it takes 35-40 to complete the poll process,” said an EC official. “Parts of the state will become snow bound and polls will not be possible until February-March.”
(With inputs from Aurangzeb Nasqhbandi in New Delhi and Arun Joshi in Jammu)
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
