The order of district election officer (deputy commissioner) Jammu for adding those persons to the voter list who have been residing here for more than one year has triggered a fresh controversy with political parties describing it as “highly suspicious” and accusing the BJP of being scared of the elections.
PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti, National Conference (NC), Congress and also J&K Peoples Conference (JKPC), whose leader Sajjad Lone was a minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government from BJP quota, have criticised the Election Commission for issuing such an order.
Reacting to the order issued by the DC Jammu, Avny Lavasa, the NC tweeted: “The Government is going ahead with its plan to add 25 lakh non-local voters in J&K and we continue to oppose this move. BJP is scared of the elections & knows it will lose badly. People of J&K must defeat these conspiracies at the ballot box”.
Mehbooba Mufti described the move as a blow to the identity of Jammu’s Dogras. She tweeted: “ECI’s latest order for registration of new voters makes it clear that GOIs colonial settler project has been initiated in Jammu. They will bear the first blow to Dogra culture, identity, employment & business. BJPs attempts to create religious & regional divisions between Jammu & Kashmir must be thwarted because whether it’s a Kashmiri or a Dogra, safeguarding our identity & rights will be possible only if we put up a collective fight.”
Joining the issue with the government, JKPC tweeted: “The latest order by DC Jammu authorising revenue officials to issue certificates of residence to outsiders residing in Jammu for more than one year is highly suspicious and aimed at enabling them to vote. This goes against the SC judgement on the issue. The onus of proving our suspicions wrong yet again lies on the ECI and the J&K administration. They must clarify if such a directive is permissible”.
The controversy first started in August when the then chief electoral officer Hirdesh Kumar told mediapersons that about 25 lakh additional voters, including outsiders, might be added to the voter list after the special summary revision of electoral rolls. All political parties, except the BJP strongly opposed inclusion of outsiders as voters and have constituted a 14-member all party committee to oppose the move. They alleged it as a move of BJP to import voters before assembly elections are held in J&K.
However, the administration later clarified that “this revision of electoral rolls will cover existing residents of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the increase in numbers will be of the voters who have attained the age of 18 years as of October 1, 2022, or earlier”.
This is the first time that the revision of the electoral rolls is being done after the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019.
The controversy broke out again when the Deputy Commissioner of Jammu on Tuesday issued an order authorising all tehsildars (revenue officials) to issue certificates of residence to anyone who has lived in the district for more than one year. The order said the decision was taken to ensure that no eligible voter is left for registration in the ongoing special summary revision of electoral rolls.
According to the order, any document including the Aadhar Card, water/electricity/gas connection, bank passbooks, passport, registered rent or land deeds, etc., can be used as proof of residence. Those not possessing any of these documents can be included in the voter list after field verification.
The order added that the special summary revision is meant for registration of new voters and the deletion, correction, and transposition of voters who have migrated or died since the last summary revision was held in Jammu and Kashmir.