New Delhi: Assembly elections in Jammu & Kashmir will be held “right after” the Lok Sabha polls, the Election Commission of India (ECI) said Saturday. The Supreme Court had earlier directed the ECI to hold assembly elections in J&K by 30 September, 2024.
The general elections will be held in seven phases — from April 19 to June 1 — and results will be declared on 4 June.
“We are committed to holding Jammu & Kashmir assembly elections right after Lok Sabha polls as soon as possible,” Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar said Saturday while announcing the Lok Sabha poll dates.
While Kumar acknowledged that all political parties demanded simultaneous polls in the Union territory with the Lok Sabha, he said there was “unanimous” resistance from the administration. ThePrint had earlier reported that the ruling BJP, in line with other regional parties of the UT, was also keen on simultaneous polls in J&K.
Giving reasons for non-simultaneous polls, Kumar said, “Administrative agencies unanimously said we cannot conduct it (elections) together. We asked why. When assembly constituencies go to polls simultaneously, each constituency will have around 10-12 candidates. This means around 1,000 candidates.”
He added, “In Jammu & Kashmir, due to security concerns, each candidate needs to be provided with two sections of forces. That means for these 1,000 candidates, we will need 450-500 more companies. In this vast country, at this point of time that could not be provided due to security reasons.”
Former J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah had in an interview to ThePrint this week said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi must push for simultaneous polls and include J&K in the “one nation, one election umbrella”.
“The PM himself has talked about ‘one nation, one election’. If you are looking for that, and assuming that by the next Parliament elections, you will have this process in place, then why not start now? This is a brilliant opportunity to bring in J&K into the one nation one election umbrella by having elections for assembly and Parliament simultaneously,” Abdullah had said.
The ECI’s decision to not hold simultaneous polls comes at a time when the Modi government is pushing for ‘One Nation, One Election’.
Jammu & Kashmir has been without assembly for over five years now, with the last assembly elections having taken place in December 2014. The upcoming Lok Sabha polls will be the first major election in the state after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, apart from 2020 district development polls.
Apart from this, it will also be the first election based on the delimitation report submitted in 2022. Instead of two Lok Sabha seats in Jammu and three in Kashmir, both regions now have two Lok Sabha seats each. The fifth seat cuts through the two regions — across three districts in South Kashmir and two districts in Jammu region.
Lok Sabha elections in the Union territory will be held in five phases, with each constituency going to polls in a different phase. This time, compared to 2019, the proportion of female voters has seen a rise. For every 1,000 male voters, the number of female voters has increased to 954 in 2024 from 945 in 2019.
Reacting to the ECI’s announcement, the Congress’s chief spokesperson in J&K Ravindra Sharma expressed his disappointment in a post on X.
ECI disappointed People of J&K by not announcing overdue assembly elections.Neither SC direction nor ‘One nation one election slogancould help JK people to achieve early restoration of democracy. @INCJammuKashmir @INCIndia @Jairam_Ramesh
— Ravinder Sharma (@RavinderJKPCC) March 16, 2024
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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