New Delhi: The Election Commission will publish the finally prepared voter list of Jammu and Kashmir on October 31. In the exercise of delimitation, the first voter list of the Union Territory has been redrawn after the scope of assembly constituencies was redrawn.
In a letter to the Chief Electoral Officer of Jammu and Kashmir, the Election Commission has given a deadline to complete various activities before the final publication of the voter list on October 31.
Officials said the voter list will keep updating as there are four ‘cut-off’ dates every year to enroll people as voters.
Earlier, people who had turned 18 on or before the first day of the year could apply to become a voter on January 1. Now people who have turned 18 on or before 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October can apply to become a voter.
After the Special Summary Amendment, 2019, the annual revision of the voter list could not be done in Jammu and Kashmir due to various reasons.
Meanwhile, the exercise of re-determining the scope of constituencies in the Union Territory was underway and on May 5 this year the final demarcated segments were notified by the Delimitation Commission.
“As the electoral rolls were not revised in Jammu and Kashmir for the last three years, the newly eligible voters could not get themselves registered in the electoral rolls,” the letter said.
The voter list needs to be amended before the first assembly elections are held in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
Giving impetus to the process of holding assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, the Election Commission had started amendments in the electoral rolls after the delimitation exercise in the Union Territory in June last month and said that the draft would be prepared by August 31.
According to the deadline, the publication of the unified draft voter list will be done on September 1. The entire month of September has been kept for filing claim-objection, which is to be settled by October 15.
It is to be known that in May, the Delimitation Commission submitted the final report to the government, which was accepted. The commission was entrusted with the task of remodeling the Lok Sabha and assembly constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A. Which paved the way for the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act in 2019.
In May itself, the Central Government issued a notification saying that the orders of the Delimitation Commission would be effective from May 20. The boundaries of the assembly constituencies were redrawn through the notification.
According to the orders of the Delimitation Commission, there will be 90 assembly seats in the Union Territory (43 in Jammu division and 47 in Kashmir) out of which nine seats will be reserved for Scheduled Tribes.
The erstwhile assembly had 87 seats, including 37 in Jammu, 46 in Kashmir and four in Ladakh.
The three-member Delimitation Commission was headed by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai. The then Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra (now retired) and Jammu and Kashmir Election Commissioner KK Sharma were its two ex-officio members.
Five Lok Sabha members from Jammu and Kashmir – three from the National Conference and two from the BJP – were associate members of the commission.
The Delimitation Commission submitted its final report on May 5, just a day before the end of its two-year term.
(with input from news agency language)
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Categories: Politics