Srinagar, May 06, 2022 (PPI-OT):Rejecting the final report of the Delimitation Commission, the political parties in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), termed it a blatant attempt to disempower the Kashmiris and bring the Narendra Modi led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to the driving seat in the occupied territory.
They said that the final report of the delimitation panel has changed the electoral map of IIOJK in such a way to increase the Hindu footprint in the territory. They maintained that new boundaries have been drawn to divide the vote of traditional political parties like the National Conference to give an electoral advantage to the BJP and its local allies like People’s Conference and Apni Party.
Senior leader of IIOJK chapter of Communist Part of India (Marxist), Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, in a media interview said, the report has deepened mistrust among people. “They have done this because it suits the interest of the ruling party.
This has made the entire political process suspicious,” he said. “The voting rights for J and K assembly were restricted to only permanent residents (before Article 370 was revoked) but the commission has now extended them to non-state subjects. In the long run, this exercise is bound to disempower the people of Jammu and Kashmir,” he added.
Tarigami maintained that the Delimitation Commission has submitted its final report despite a constitutional freeze on the increase or decrease of parliamentary or assembly seats. He said though the Commission was constituted under the Delimitation Act of 2002 but it has redrawn the territory’s constituencies in accordance with the provisions of so-called J and K Reorganisation Act 2019 which has been challenged in the Indian Supreme Court.
National Conference (NC) in a tweet said that they are studying the implications of these recommendations for individual assembly constituencies. “We have seen the final recommendations of the Delimitation Commission.
It added that no amount of gerrymandering will change the ground reality and whenever elections are held the voter will punish the BJP and its proxies for what they have done to J and K over the last four years,” it said.
Separately, NC spokesperson Imran Nabi Dar said the “very existence of the Delimitation Commission is constitutionally suspect”. “Nevertheless, people deserve to get equal rights and representation. Unfortunately, it has not happened. The commission has completely ignored the important and only parameter of population in the exercise,” he said.
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in a statement said the party from day one has looked at the delimitation exercise as an extension of the process started on August 05, 2019 to disempowered people from a particular community (Muslims) and a region (Kashmir Valley).
“The final draft has proved our fears right again. The GoI [Government of India] has used or misused independent institutions to turn the electoral majority into a minority by using geography, access as a ruse. It will be for the first time in the electoral history of India that elections are being rigged long even before the first vote is cast. It’s another sad chapter of history written by the rulers sitting in New Delhi,” the PDP spokesman said.
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