Jammu and Kashmir municipal elections to be held only after delimitation of wards, says LG

The urban local bodies elections in Jammu and Kashmir will be held only after the completion of the delimitation exercise of wards and reservation of seats for Other Backward Classes, said Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha on Tuesday, reported PTI.

Sinha was addressing an event to felicitate councillors of the Jammu Municipal Corporation, whose five-year term ended on Tuesday. The Srinagar Municipal Corporation finished its term on November 5, while the other municipal bodies across the Union Territory will also complete their tenure this month.

Calling the civic bodies a symbol of “the aspirations of citizens” in the 21st century, the lieutenant governor commended all the councillors for their work, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said that despite the delayed implementation of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution in Jammu and Kashmir, the Union Territory administration has ensured basic principles of decentralisation of decision-making and development by transferring more departments and works to elected representatives after August 2019.

The central government in August 2019 abrogated Article 370 of the Constitution, which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir. It also bifurcated the erstwhile state into two Union Territories.

After the scrapping of the special status, there had been speculations of a delay in municipal elections in Jammu and Kashmir, reported The Indian Express.

As all provisions of the Constitution are now applicable to the local bodies of the Union Territory, the authorities would be required to prepare a list of socially and educationally backward classes, which would be used for providing reservations to OBCs before the elections.

This process would have to follow a Supreme Court order, which requires the authorities to set up a dedicated commission to collect empirical data on the OBC population, specify the proportion of reservations, and ensure that the cumulative share of reserved seats does not go over 50%.

Although a GD Sharma Commission has submitted its recommendations to the Jammu and Kashmir administration, they are yet to be accepted and implemented.

An official told The Indian Express that even after the administration comes up with a plan to implement the reservations, it needs to be followed up with the identification of the municipal constituencies to be reserved, which is likely to take time.

Another cause of the delay is said to be a communication from the office of the chief electoral officer, which suggested the transfer of mandate to conduct the municipal electoral processes to the State Election Commission.

Currently, the chief electoral officer holds the municipal elections in Jammu and Kashmir, in addition to Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. The State Election Commission – headed by a state election commissioner – is mandated to conduct elections to Panchayati Raj institutions.

Congress registers protest

After Sinha’s announcement, the Congress submitted a memorandum to him, expressing the party’s resentment over the delay in holding municipal and other urban local bodies polls in Jammu and Kashmir, reported Hindustan Times.

“The assembly is already dissolved for more than five years and the rural panchayats are completing their term after a month,” read the letter by Dwarka Chaudhary, the chief whip of the Congress in Jammu municipal corporation. “Thus, there shall be no elected democratic institutions left due to non-holding of elections to the overdue assembly elections apart from deferment of municipal and panchayat elections.”

National Conference leader Omar Abdullah said that the Bharatiya Janata Party was afraid of facing the people. “Leave assembly elections, now BJP is not ready to hold urban local body polls,” he added.