With J&K Elections in Sight, Centre Sets up Delimitation Panel to Redraw Assembly Seats

The three-member delimitation panel will be headed by a former Supreme Court judge, and a member each from J&K administration and Election Commission of India (ECI) will also be a part of the commission.

New Delhi: Ahead of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly election, the Centre on Monday proposed to constitute a delimitation commission to draw out the constituencies in the newly formed union territory. The three-member delimitation panel will be headed by a former Supreme Court judge, and a member each from J&K administration and Election Commission of India (ECI) will also be a part of the commission.

Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra was nominated as the member of the J&K delimitation panel.

The announcement comes in regards with the Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill, 2019, proposed and passed in August last year, where he said that the number of seats in the J&K Legislative Assembly will be increased from 107 to 114. He had also stated that the delimitation exercise may be determined by the Election Commission.

A delimitation panel is created to look into the demarcation of boundaries of a Parliamentary of Assembly seats and ensure that each constituency has more or less an equal number of voters. The exercise is usually conducted the year after Census, but also when a state is divided into further states or union territories.

The assembly polls in the erstwhile state were supposed to be held six months after the legislation was dissolved by the Governor on November 21, 2018. However, with Centre’s move on August 5 that abrogated Article 370 and bifurcated Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories, the elections were postponed until further notice.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president JP Nadda had noted recently that once the delimitation of seats is confirmed, the date for assembly polls will be announced.

Meanwhile, the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Polls 2020 is less than 20 days away and will be conducted in eight phases. According to the ECI, the first phase of the by-polls will be held on March 5, followed by second on March 7, third on March 9, fourth on March 12, fifth on March 14, sixth on March 16, seventh on March 18 and last on March 20.