Kashmir-based political parties on Thursday rejected the final order of the Delimitation Commission and described it as yet another step of the BJP to disempower Kashmiris.
The three-member Delimitation Commission on Jammu and Kashmir, headed by Justice (retd) Ranjana Desai, earlier during the day signed the final order on redrawing the assembly constituencies.
The National Conference (NC), whose all three MPs including Dr. Farooq Abdullah were associate members of the Commission, said it was studying the report but warned “No amount of gerrymandering will change the ground reality which is that whenever elections are held the voter will punish the BJP & it’s proxies for what they have done to J&K over the last 4 years”.
“We have seen the final recommendations of the Delimitation Commission. We are studying the implications of these recommendations for individual assembly constituencies”, the NC tweeted.
It is worth mentioning that the commission has proposed increasing the number of seats in the UT from 83 to 90. Besides, there are 24 seats for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) that continue to remain vacant. The panel has also proposed six additional seats for Jammu and one for Kashmir. As of now, the Kashmir division has 46 seats and the Jammu division 37.
Jammu & Kashmir Apni Party “unequivocally rejected” the final report of the Delimitation Commission, Party’s state secretary Muntazir Mohiden said in a video statement.
Peoples Conference led by Sajad Lone described the Delimitation report as a repeat of the past. Same traditional entities are calling the shots behind the scenes. “Kashmir has been discriminated against as in the past. No change. Only the degree of disempowerment is greater”, PC said.
“Over the last six decades, Kashmir’s share of assembly seats in the J&K assembly increased from 43 to 47 while Jammu’s share rose from 30 to 43. Who is responsible for the systematic disempowerment of Kashmiris since 1947? Those who aided and abetted in the journey from Jammu’s 30 to 37 are the ones who aided and abetted from 37 to 43”, the statement said.
The statement further said that the PC had hoped that Kashmiri parties stayed away and not diluted the stigma associated with a people-less process, which was essentially a tool for the disempowerment of Kashmiris.
“Hope Kashmiris will now remember the parties who associated themselves with the delimitation process which was, in essence, a tool for disempowerment and will always be in wonderment. How could a party which associated itself with the delimitation process be so audacious? They actually had the nerve of submitting one memorandum in Kashmir and a separate memorandum in Jammu. Ironically the memorandums were contradictory. The Jammu one seemed to have been copy-pasted from the Hindutva brigade”, the statement added.
The statement maintained that the party will file an RTI and seek the video recordings of the meetings to expose how those who started beating their chests outside the meeting halls were bending their back backward to appease and please the members of the delimitation commission.
“Financial scams indulged in —- during the last few decades cannot be squared off by covertly facilitating disempowerment of the Kashmiris. How stupid we were. We couldn’t see through the game plan. The raids. The EDs. It was all a game. A trade off. They had again bartered away the Kashmiris. The barterers are the same. When will this change. We are not saying that had they not participated there would have been no delimitation and that the process would have been stalled. But the process would not enjoy the sanctity that they enjoy now”, the statement concluded.