Early Times Report
JAMMU, Feb 5: The State unit of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has been directed by the high command in New Delhi to press for holding elections on the 24 seats reserved in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly for the electorate of the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Knowledgeable sources here said that the BJP leadership in Jammu had been advised by the high command to agitate the matter of the 24 vacant seats in the forthcoming Assembly session, beginning on February 10th. Accordingly, the unified State leadership would, for the first time, demand election on all the 24 seats. The party would press for inclusion of the PoK refugees in the Assembly electoral roll.
Currently, these refugees are eligible for voting in the Parliamentary elections but they have not exercised their right to vote in the Assembly elections since the 1950s and 1960s when most of them returned from Muzaffarabad, Mirpur, Kotli, Hajeera, Rawlakot and other places and settled in different parts of the Jammu division.
When the Assembly was constituted and the first delimitation was executed in early 1950s, 24 seats were reserved for the people of the Pakistan-occupied territories. Until recently, J&K Legislative Assembly had 76 seats for the State subject voters and 24 for the people living in PoK and parts of Pakistan.
Later in 1995-96, an addition of 11 seats was approved for the Assembly, making it a House of 89 seats, including two female members who are nominated as MLA by the Governor.
On December 1st, 2013, BJP President Rajnath Singh, was the first who raised the issue of the 24 vacant seats, at the party's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi's historic rally at M.A. Stadium in Jammu. He categorically demanded that until the time, the PoK residents return and the Pakistan-occupied territory is retained back in the Indian sovereignty, hundreds of thousands of the PoK refugees should be granted the right of casting the vote in the Assembly elections. |
