Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 20: Chief Electoral Officer, Jammu and Kashmir, Shaleen Kabra, who has been designated as the Election Authority for conduct of Municipal and Panchayat elections in Jammu and Kashmir, today notified the reserved Wards in all Municipal bodies of the State and invited objections/suggestions for a period of seven days.
The Wards have been reserved for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, women (open category), women (Scheduled Caste category) and women (Scheduled Tribe category). The reservations have been made as per Section 10-A of Jammu and Kashmir Municipal Corporation Act and Section 11-A of Jammu and Kashmir Municipal Act.
Anyone having objections or suggestions on reservations of the Wards can file them in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer at Old Secretariat, Srinagar within seven days.
The Act provides for reservation of one-third Wards for the women in each of 79 Municipal bodies in the State including two Corporations—Jammu and Srinagar and seven Councils.
This included reservation for SC and ST women candidates at the rate of one-third of the number of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes respectively, in each Municipal body.
“The number of Wards to be reserved for women (open category), women (Scheduled Castes category) and women (Scheduled Tribe category) for each Municipal body have been fixed after applying the principle of mathematical rounding off as mentioned in each Municipal body separately,’’ official sources said.
They added that the allocation of specific wards to be reserved for women in all three categories including Open, SC and STs, has been done on a three point roster system for each category separately. The roster points have been taken on the basis of seats reserved for women and open seats.
“Identification of the Wards to be reserved by rotation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has been done on the basis of SC/ST population of the identified Wards in descending order, after excluding the Wards reserved in 2005 elections and such Wards where their population percentage is less than that equivalent to one seat,’’ sources said.
They added that the Jammu and Kashmir Municipal Corporation Act amended from time to time provides that the number of Wards to be reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in every Municipal body have to be in proportion to the total population of SCs and STs in the area falling under the Municipal body.
“For this purpose, the population of SCs and STs in the Municipal area has been furnished by the Deputy Commissioners,’’ sources said.
The three point roster system has been applied for each Municipal Body for the Wards in each category of open, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes after listing them in increasing numeric order for each category.
However, in case, the roster leads to a Ward, which has been reserved in 2005 under the same category, the Ward immediately next in serial, has been reserved.
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