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| Delimitation: BJP has no moral right to denounce government | | |
BY RUSTAM
JAMMU, JAN 7: BJP state president Ashok Khajuria is not happy with the performance of the National Conference coalition government. He has several grievances against it. One of them is that the government did not amend the Representation of People’s Act during its 12-month-long rule in order to pave way for the fresh delimitation of the Assembly constituencies. In other words, his grievance is that the ruling coalition has denied the people of Jammu province of their right to due representation in the Assembly in accordance of the laid down criteria – land area and nature of its terrain, accessibility and population/voters strength.
One should agree with Ashok Khajuria to the extent that constitution of a delimitation commission after every census/ after every ten years is a constitutional obligation and that the Centre and all the States of the Union undertook such an exercise only recently to fulfill this constitutional obligation. The State Government should have followed the spirit of the constitution and established that it is second to none as far as its commitment to the people’s democracy and the Indian Constitution is concerned.
By not doing so the State Government has given a long stick to its opponents to beat it from right and left and propagate that it did not set up delimitation commission because it wants the continuation of Kashmir’s domination over the State’s political and administrative apparatus.
However, the fundamental question to be asked to Ashok Khajuria is: Has he and his party any moral and political right to denounce the State Government on this ground? If one goes by what all the BJP legislators did on the floor of the Assembly in February 2002, one would surely say no. One would undoubtedly accuse the BJP of playing the politics of deceit and saying one thing in the public and doing exactly the opposite on the floor of the Assembly. Indeed, the BJP has no moral right to question the State Government’s failure to set up a new delimitation commission.
It bears recalling that the then National Conference government had amended the Representation of the People’s Act. The amendment, unlike the amendment in the Indian Representation of People’s Act, debarred the authorities to set up a delimitation commission till 2026. (The amendment to the Indian Representation of People’s Act has only laid down that neither the Lok Sabha constituencies not the Assembly constituencies can be increased till 2026.)
The amendment to the Jammu and Kashmir Representation of People’s Act was indeed an unconstitutional and anti-people amendment to which all the then BJP legislators were also a party. They, like the five Congress legislators, were a party to the anti-democratic and anti-constitutional amendment because they, without any exception, voted for the amendment – a fact candidly acknowledged by the Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister P K Dhumal during the election campaign in the Raipur-Domana Assembly constituency. To say that the BJP legislators were not aware of the implications of the amendment would be too much. The fact of the matter is that they joined hands with the National Conference to harm the legitimate interests of Jammu for reasons best known to them.
There is an impression that the State Government would set up such a commission in 2026. This is a wrong impression. The fact is that the State Government, according to the amendment, cannot appoint a new delimitation commission before the 2031 census. That means the State Government would, if it so likes, set up a delimitation commission only towards the end of the fourth decade of this century. To be more precise, the people of Jammu province, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs included, will have to wait for at least 30 odd years. This is a long wait. This is the factual position and this does not augur well for the future of democracy in the State.
The National Conference-Congress coalition government must undo the wrong. The Congress, in particular, needs to take the initiative at the earliest as it would benefit it and the Jammu constituency it actually represents. The Congress is a national party and it has to behave as such.
As for the BJP, it would do well to express regret for its anti-Jammu act and then put forth a demand for the delimitation of Assembly constituencies. It cannot befool the people of Jammu province any longer. They are quite awakened. They know who is doing what.
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