Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, Dec 21: Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed will soon call a high level meeting on working out modalities for holding Municipal and Panchayat elections next year and discuss a proposal by the Election Commission to use Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) for Municipal and ballot papers for Panchayat elections.
Top official sources told the Excelsior that the Chief Minister, who has taken the initiative to hold Municipal elections after 10 years and Panchayat elections on time (i.e. within five years of the completion of terms of existing Panchayats), has called high level meeting to discuss preparation for the elections and other modalities.
Deputy Chief Minister Dr Nirmal Singh, who holds the portfolio of Urban Development Department (which oversees the Municipalities), Rural Develop-ment Minister Abdul Haq Khan, whose department is responsible for functioning of Panchayats, Chief Secretary BR Sharma and Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Shant Manu among others would attend the meeting.
While the Chief Minister has already announced holding of the elections to Municipalities and Panchayats in March-April and May-June respectively, a detailed mechanism has to be worked out for the elections taking several factors like Legislature session, weather conditions and security considerations etc into account before holding the elections.
Sources said on its part, Chief Electoral Officer Shant Manu has proposed to the Government for using EVMs for the first time in the ULB elections and ballot boxes for Panchayat polls.
The Election Department has proposed that it has sufficient number of EVMs with it for holding elections to 78 Municipalities in the State. However, as number of the Panchayat constituencies including Sarpanch and Panch was whopping 33,500 it will not be possible to use the EVMs there. It has proposed that ballot boxes be used for the Panchayat elections.
According to sources, number of Panchayats that would go to elections will remain static at 4098 like 2011 elections.
“There will be 4098 Sarpanch constituencies and 29402 Panch constituencies totaling 33,500 segments for which the elections will be held,” sources said, adding that there will be 1953 Sarpanch constituencies in Jammu and 2145 in Kashmir (including Ladakh region) as against 13,635 Panch segments in Jammu region and 15,767 in Kashmir (including Ladakh region) totaling 29402.
Sources said there will be no change in total number of Panchayats across the State including number of Sarpanch and Panch constituencies as the Government has decided not to hold fresh delimitation or rotate the reserved Wards for the next year’s elections.
The delimitation of Panchayats, according to sources, could consume lot of time, thus, delaying the elections.
It may be mentioned here that the Government has decided to adopt similar process for the Municipal elections i.e. it will neither hold delimitation of the Wards nor rotate the reserved Wards.
Total number of Municip-alities that will go to elections is 78 as against 76 on which elections was held in January 2005. The Municipalities included two Corporations (Jammu and Srinagar), six Councils (Kathua, Udhampur and Poonch in Jammu region and Baramulla, Anantnag and Sopore in Kashmir). Rest including Leh and Kargil in Ladakh region were Municipalities.
Sources said the Government would like dates of Municipal elections, which were proposed to be held before the Panchayat elections, announced in such a way that they don’t clash with budget session of the Legislature.
The budget session of the Legislature will end on March 9. Once Model Code of Conduct is enforced by the Election Department, no major announcement can be made by the Government and, therefore, it might not be possible to run the session.
As the Election Department had to keep minimum time of 25 days between announcement of elections and first phase of polling, the Municipal elections can start from April 5 provided that the Government didn’t cut short the budget session.
Sources said even after starting the elections on April 5, the Election Department can finish off the election process by the end of April and then for the Panchayat polls in June if everything goes well.
The Municipal elections were last held in January 2000 and five year term of the Municipalities was over in March 2010. Since then the previous National Conference-Congress regime made no efforts to hold the elections to the Municipalities.
However, it was the NC-Congress regiment, which held the Panchayat elections in June-July 2011 after 37 years. The elections will be due in June-July this year.
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