More than a hundred BJP activists from the Suchetgarh area along the international border with Pakistan in the Jammu district on Monday quit the party protesting against the Delimitation Commission merging the assembly constituency with Ranbirsinghpura.

They protested at the BJP office here seeking restoration of the Suchetgarh constituency that was created more than 43 years ago.

Kashmir centric political parties were so far protesting against the draft proposals of the Delimitation Commission but now the BJP and other Jammu based parties have also joined the protests against the manner in which several constituencies have been redrawn by merging these with other constituencies.

Nineteen constituencies, 10 in Kashmir and 9 in Jammu, will cease to exist as these have been merged and renamed.

Prof.Bhim Singh, President of J&K National Panthers Party, urged the President Ramnath Kovind to dissolve the present Delimitation Commission by using his sovereign power to save peace in J&K.

Leaders of recognised political parties in J&K must be consulted and their opinion recorded about the credibility of the draft report which, Bhim Singh said, was a dangerous mode to carry forward Owen Dixon’s J&K Plan of 1951. The plan was rejected by all national and state political parties, he said.

Meanwhile, J&K Peoples Conference described the exercise of delimitation as an attempt to “disempower and disenfranchise” the people of Kashmir.

The delimitation commission’s refusal to change its earlier assertions are least surprising.

To add salt to the wounds of the Kashmiris we have a new wondrous invention in the form of a parliamentary constituency invented by merging two regions – South Kashmir and Rajouri. The inhabitants of these two regions have totally different aspirations, the problems and challenges they face are completely different, the topography is different and yet for reasons best known to the commission they actually merged two distinct regions to carve out a single Parliamentary Constituency.

The people of Kashmir are going through some of the most troubled times. There seems to be no let up in belittling them and “showing them their place”. “Irrationalism is an ugly and a sad constant in the delimitation exercise”.

This whole exercise seems to be an exercise in disruption. They are trying to act as the new disruptors – disrupt the political system, disrupt the political equilibrium and disrupt and confuse the existing political class, the Peoples Conference claimed.