Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 16: Strongly advocating for extensive and fair review of electoral rolls of J&K, the former Union Minister and MLA, Prof. Chaman Lal Gupta said that lists are not only full of mistakes but also engineered to play foul with the whole democratic process.
In a statement issued here today Prof Gupta said there is need for a deep look by the Election Commission of India to ensure fairness.
He recalled that 2002 Assembly elections in the State were taken as fairest and it was for the first time in democratic history of J&K, the Government was changed through ballot and confidence of the people was restored in the process.
In 2002 elections Jammu region was having over 3 lakh more voters than those of Kashmir valley but in 2008 mysteriously this number was changed. Many voters were deleted in Jammu and that those of the Valley were raised. Thus the number of voters of the two major regions was put almost equal.
He further said since then the political engineering in the preparation of electoral rolls is still going on. For instance in the district of Kupwara bordering PoK, there has been an increase of about 70% in the number of voters where as in Jammu district and some other areas of the region the increase is nominal, hardly 10% to 20% during the past decade.
Moreover, even in Jammu region including the Municipal areas of Capital City of Jammu scrutiny of the lists reveals that there had been hardly any increase in the number of electors but in some of the wards the number of voters have increased by about 50% to 100% . In ward No.71 (Sidhra) the number of voters in 2005 civic elections was just 446, but now this has been put at more than two thousands, which means an increase of nearly five times.
Prof. Gupta said the number of Kashmiri migrant voters in 2002 elections was registered at over 1 lakh, but now in 2013 this number has been given 83653 which means decrease of about 20%.
This presents a measuring outlook especially when the number of migrant families have increased to about 62000 including 41000 in Jammu alone but on the contrary the number of migrant voters have been put to less than 90,000. The foul, he alleged is very much evident on the face of these figures.
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