Exercise to be initiated after OBC Comm report
*Delimitation process may also be taken up
Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, Oct 3: After successful Assembly elections, Jammu and Kashmir is likely to see conduct of Municipal and Panchayat polls but only after a three-member Commission set up by the Government for determining reservation percentage of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the Local Bodies submits report and based on that the Wards are reserved for OBCs.
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The OBC Commission was set up on June 11 while the Chairman and Members were nominated on July 31. Justice (Retd) Janak Raj Kotwal is Chairman of the Commission while Raj Kumar Bhagat, a retired IAS officer and Prof Mohinder Singh Bhardwaj, ex Dean SKUAST-Jammu are the members.
The Commission is yet to submit its report.
Officials told the Excelsior that submission of report by the OBC Commission is mandatory before initiating the exercise for conducting Panchayat and Municipal elections as it has to determine the percentage to be given to the OBCs in reservation in Panchayats, Municipalities, Block Development Councils (BDCs) and District Development Councils (DDCs).
Presently, the women have 33 percent reservations in Urban and Rural Local Bodies while SCs and STs have been given reservations based on population.
“Once the Commission submits its report, the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department will undertake an exercise to reserve the Wards for women, SCs, STs and OBCs in Panchayats followed by delimitation, if required,” the officials said.
The Panchayat and Municipal elections can be held after this exercise is over, they added.
The Parliament had in February this year cleared the bill for providing reservations to the OBCs in Panchayats, Municipalities, BDCs and DDCs.
Because of the reservations to OBCs for the first time in these bodies in Jammu and Kashmir, elections to Panchayats and Municipalities, which were due to be held in October-November last year, have been delayed.
On June 7, 2024, the Administrative Council headed by LG Manoj Sinha had cleared a proposal for constituting the Panel for proposing reservation for OBCs in Panchayats and Municipalities.
In 2023, the Parliament had made amendments in J&K’s reservation law to rechristen “Weak and Under-privileged Classes (Social Castes)” as “Other Backward Classes”.
Later, in February 2024, the Parliament amended the J&K’s Municipal and Panchayat laws to facilitate reservation of OBCs in local bodies of the UT.
The Municipalities, Panchayats and BDCs are now without elected members for nearly one year. While term of the Municipalities ended in October-November last year, the Panchayats completed their tenure on January 9 this year. Since term of the BDCs was co-terminus with the Panchayats, they too ceased to exist when five-year tenure of the Panchayats ended.
However, the District Development Councils whose elections were held for the first time in Jammu and Kashmir in December 2020 have their term till January 2026.
The last Panchayat and Municipal elections were held from September to November 2018. The Panchayat polls were held on a non-party basis while Municipal elections were conducted on party basis.
A total of 27,281 Panchs (Panchayat members) and Sarpanchs (Village Headmen) were elected in the 2018 elections.
The Panchayat polls in J&K are not conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI) but by the J&K State Election Commission which is headed by BR Sharma, retired Chief Secretary and Public Services Commission (PSC) Chairman.
Complete Panchayat elections in 2018 were held after decades while Municipal polls in the same year were conducted after 13 years.
Three-tier Panchayat Raj System in Jammu and Kashmir was completed for the first time with the elections held to the District Development Councils in December 2020. There are 20 DDCs in J&K-10 each in Jammu and Kashmir divisions.
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