Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, June 25: Seeking the amendment of Sec 47 of the State Constitution as well as the J&K Representation of People’s Act during the current session of the Legislative Assembly, former Minister and senior NPP leader Harshdev Singh has sought early delimitation of Assembly constituencies in the State.
In a press statement Mr Singh said that assurances for delimitation and for ending regional bias were not only doled out by the Central BJP leadership but the BJP’s vision document released during elections also categorically promised early delimitation of Assembly constituencies in J&K so as to ensure justice to Jammu region with 33 % seats reserved for women, five seats for displaced persons of PoJK out of 24 seats reserved for them in the State constitution and three seats for Kashmir migrants.
Lambasting the approach of the Govt towards the main demand of Jammu region with failure of the Jammu leaders to rake up the issue in Assembly, Harshdev said that delimitation of constituencies which forms a part of the Coalition’s agenda of alliance deserved a priority consideration with early constitution of Delimitation Commission. He said that delimitation process involving delimitation of constituencies, re-adjustment of territorial boundaries, rotation of reserved seats, identification of seats for fresh reservation, reservation of seats as proposed for women etc. should be completed in a time bound manner.
Emphasizing the urgency to initiate the delimitation process on war footing, NPP leader said that geographical area, topography, number of voters, nature of terrain, inaccessibility and poor communication facilities are the factors which weigh heavily in favour of Jammu region and entitle it to a higher number of Assembly constituencies. Quoting the officials statistics, Harshdev said that it was ironical that Kashmir valley with a total area of 15953 sq km had 46 Assembly seats as compared to 37 seats for Jammu region whose geographical areas was 26293 sq kms. He further said that Kashmir region despite well developed communication links and a high road density has one Assembly segment for every 346 sq kms area, but contrarily Jammu region with its highly tough terrain and acute accessibility problems and an extremely low road density has one Assembly segment for every 710 sq kms.
He said that in terms of voters also, there are wide disparities with constituencies in Kashmir like Gurez Assembly which has merely 18,000 voters against around two lakh voters of Jammu West and Gandhi Nagar constituencies. Kishtwar region provided the most glaring example of discrimination as it had only two Assembly seats with an area of 7824 sq km which was half of the area of entire Kashmir region.
Mr Singh regretted that while delimitation process had been completed all over the country by Justice Kuldeep Singh commission, it was J&K State alone which had been singled out under the pretext of Art 370.
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