The Delimitation Commission proposed the addition of seven more Assembly seats for Jammu and Kashmir, six of them for the Jammu division and one for the Kashmir valley. In the draft submitted, the commission recommended reserving nine seats for the Scheduled Tribes (ST) and seven for the Scheduled Caste (SC) community on the basis of population.
The proposal will increase the number of seats in Kashmir to 47 and in Jammu to 43. It also stated that the increment in the proposal was not based on the 2011 census.
The Delimitation Commission of J&K owes its existence to the provisions of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation act of 2019. Aside from Masoodi, the Members of Parliament ( MP) in the panel are Farooq Abdullah and Mohammad Akbar Lone ( NC) and Union Minister Jitendra Singh and Jugal Kishore Sharma( BJP). Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra and J&K State Election Commissioner KK Sharma are the ex-officio members of the delimitation panel.
This Act provides the term that other aspects in addition to the population of the area have to be taken into account. Sushil Chandra, Chief Election Commissioner, member of the J&K Delimitation Commission said that the delimitation must reflect political aspirations and it is not a mathematical exercise.
The Opposition has expressed concerns over the proposed draft by stating that the provision in the Delimitation Acts from 1952 onward states that factors other than population such as physical features, communication facilities, and public convenience, boundaries of administrative units should be taken into consideration. The officials of the Commission have stood their ground and mentioned that they have followed the rules in recommending the 6 additional seats in Jammu and one in Kashmir. But the National Conference (NC) has termed the proposal as “unacceptable”. It is said that the increase in seats in Jammu would tilt the balance of power towards it.
A senior official who was involved with the process gave the example of Uttarakhand and said that all hill districts with less than 20% of the population than the districts located in the plains were included in the Delimitation of 2008.
Although the proposed draft has been made in the public domain is yet to be published in the official gazette. But this proposal has received heavy and unanimous criticism from Kashmir’s politicians.
This strong opposition to the commission’s draft has forced the government to reconsider the Delimitation exercise for the entire nation which is due in 2026. The Lok Sabha seats initially were linked to the population by the Constitution. Amendments that followed froze the population at the 1971 census till the first census after 2026.
The Delimitation of any state or union territory is expected to bring about major changes in the politics of the area and eventually will affect the people there. The process of the Commission should be made as transparent as possible and not rushed into.
