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| Profile of members | | | Ishtiyaq Ahmad
Early Times Report
Srinagar, July 9: The 3-member Delimitation Commission comprising Retired Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sushil Chandra, and Jammu and Kashmir Election Commissioner Kewal Kumar Sharma was appointed in February 2020.
Besides three Members of Parliament of National Conference-Dr Farooq Abdullah, Retired Justice Hasnian Masoodi, Muhammad Akbar Lone and two MPs of BJP Jitendra Singh and Jugal Kishore Sharma are its associated members who have been nominated by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.
Retired Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai: Desai is a former judge of Supreme Court of India. She has also been public prosecutor for Maharashtra and also served as a judge of Bombay High Court. In 1986, Desai was appointed as the State of Maharashtra’s Special Public Prosecutor in cases concerning preventive detention.
Sushil Chandra: He is a 1980 batch Indian Revenue Service officer. He is the current and 24th Chief Election Commissioner of India. He previously served as the Chairperson of the Central Board of Direct Taxes.
He has been Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals) International Taxation, Delhi. He was also the Director of Investigation, Mumbai and Director General Investigation, Gujarat. On 15 February 2019, he was appointed as the Election Commissioner of India and took office as the Chief Election Commissioner of India on 13 April 2021.
Kewal Kumar Sharma (KK Sharma): He hails from district Kathua of Jammu region. He is a 1983-batch retired Indian Administrative Officer of Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territories (AGMUT) cadre. In November 2018, he was appointed as advisor to the then Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Satya Pal Malik. Following the creation of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, he was appointed advisor to then Lieutenant Governor Girish Chandra Murmu and then Manoj Sinha. On October 30, 2020 he resigned as advisor to the Lieutenant Governor and was appointed as Election Commissioner of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Sharma has also served as Advisor to the Administrator of Chandigarh, Chief Secretary of Goa and Chief Secretary of Delhi.
The Delimitation Commission was constituted in March 2020 and its term was extended by another year in March 2021 in view of the ongoing pandemic.
The visit of the delimitation commission came around two weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with the leaders of mainstream political parties from Jammu and Kashmir where he stressed that the delimitation exercise has to happen quickly so that assembly polls can be held in the UT.
Of the mainstream parties, the National Conference, which has won all the three Lok Sabha seats from the Kashmir Valley, had earlier decided to stay away from the proceedings of the commission contending there was no need to redraw the constituencies at this stage. Now barring PDP, all major parties met the commission.
Before August 5, 2019, the strength of the realigned Jammu and Kashmir Assembly was 111 this includes 46 in Kashmir, 37 in Jammu and 4 in Ladakh — 24 were reserved for Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
According to the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, the seats for Jammu and Kashmir Assembly will be increased by seven seats and they will go up from 83 to 90 post-delimitation. Four seats of Ladakh won’t be included as it has been carved out a separate Union Territory.
The last delimitation in J-K was in 1995 based on the census of 1981, a census wasn’t carried out in the region in 1991 owing to the eruption of militancy. The population of Hindus was recorded at its highest by the 1981 census – 32.24 percent of J-K’s population.
Fears are ripe in Kashmir that the intent behind the exercise is gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering is a biased redrawing of electoral constituencies with the aim of creating an unfair political advantage by first breaking down vote banks and then repacking them in a way that numbers favour a particular political party. |
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