Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, June 10: Seeking early delimitation of Assembly constituencies in the State as assured by the Centre as well as State Govt in the Agenda of Alliance, Panthers Party activists led by party chairman Harsh Dev Singh and other leaders staged a protest demonstration at Exhibition Ground near Press Club here today.
Angry protestors while raising anti-Govt slogans torched the effigy of the BJP accusing the Saffron party of dilly dallying over the issue of delimitation under pressure of the Kashmir centric leaders.
Addressing the media, Harsh Dev said that it was high time that Central Govt initiated measures for removal of regional imbalances and end of regional bias in conformity with its slogans and elections time promises. He said that delimitation of constituencies which formed a part of the BJP agenda deserved a priority consideration with its passage in the current Parliament session itself so as to pave way for the delimitation exercise.
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He said that the exercise of delimitation involved a passage of a bill by amendment of Sec 47 of the State Constitution, followed by Constitution of Delimitation Commission as envisaged under the Representation of Peoples Act with ultimate 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.
Flaying previous BJP Govt, Harsh Dev 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 under Sec 48 of the State Constitution and 3 seats for Kashmir migrants out of 46 seats earmarked for Kashmir.
While quoting official statistics, Singh said that it was ironical that Kashmir valley with a total area of 15953 sq kms had 46 Assembly seats as compared to 37 seats for Jammu region whose geographical areas was 26293 sq kms. 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 16,000 voters against around 2 lakh voters of Jammu West and Gandhi Nagar constituencies. He said that Kishtwar region provided the most glaring example of discrimination as it had only two Assembly seats with an area of 7824 sq kms which was half of the area of entire Kashmir region.
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