In a bid to speed up the process of delineation of the Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies in J&K, Deputy Election Commissioner Chandra Bushan Kumar held virtual meetings with 20 Deputy Commissioners (DCs) of the Union Territory on Wednesday.
Mr. Kumar held two separate virtual meetings, first with the DCs, who are also District Electoral Officers (DEOs), from the Jammu region, followed by meetings with the officers from the Kashmir region.
It was the first such meeting with the DEOs since the J&K Delimitation Commission headed by Justice (Retd.) Ranjana Prakash Desai, with five associate members comprising local Members of Parliaments, was set up in March 2020.
Officials said the exercise was aimed at collecting data on population, and details of the topography of each Assembly and Parliamentary constituency in J&K.
Also read: Delimitation Commission gets one-year extension to conclude its task in J&K
The move comes days after National Conference (NC) president Dr. Farooq Abdullah, whose party has three MPs from J&K, dropped broad hints at joining the Delimitation Commission. Earlier, NC MPs boycotted the Commissions’ meetings, saying the party had challenged the whole exercise in court.
The Law Ministry had extended the Commission’s tenure by another year, up to March 2022, after its one-year term ended on March 5, 2021. The J&K Reorganization Act of 2019 increased J&K’s Assembly seats by seven, taking the total number of seats to 114, with 24 seats reserved for Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) constituencies, and 90 for J&K.
