Srinagar: Senior Congress leader and former Union minister Saifuddin Soz said in a statement on Thursday that the J&K Delimitation Commission’s recomendation smacks of erroneous assessment.
“The Commission’s recommendation of adding six Assembly seats to Jammu region and only one seat to Kashmir smacks of its pre-determined erroneous assessment of the situation. Many observers had already suspected that the Commission would play the nefarious game in tandem with the Union government,” the statement read.
Soz added that the Commission has failed to appreciate that a sizable number of people in Kashmir belong to social castes which carry the same stigma as STs and SCs.
“Also, a glaring folly of the Commission is that it has recommended to merge the Anantnag parliamentary constituency with Rajouri and Poonch. This is an impossible situation,” the statement said.
“The Commission has further committed the blunder of allotting nine Assembly seats to SC/STs, of whom six belong to Jammu region and only three to Kashmir division.
“My understanding is that it is still possible for the Union government to consult the state’s mainstream political class in this connection,” Soz said in the statement.
The Delimitation Commission for J&K on Thursday finalised the delimitation order and submitted it to the Election Commission of India wherein it has recommended 43 Assembly seats for Jammu division and 47 seats for the Kashmir region.
For the first time, nine Assembly constituencies have been reserved for STs, out of which, six are in Jammu region and three in Kashmir. The constitution of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state had no provision for reservation of seats for STs in the Legislative Assembly.
