‘Polls due, required formalities completed’
Voting schedule of 3 States announced
Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, Jan 18: Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar said today that Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir are due and formalities required for their conduct have been completed.
However, he said, the elections will be held taking into account security and weather issues and schedule of polls in other States.
Kumar said this in response to a query at a press conference in New Delhi while announcing Assembly election schedule in three States including Nagaland, Tripura and Meghalaya.
“Assembly elections are due in Jammu and Kashmir. However, they will be held after taking security issues and weather situation into account. Schedule of Assembly elections in other States will also have to be considered,” Kumar said in response to a question at the press conference.
“We are conscious that in any place which is due for elections, it is our duty that we get the Government in place as mandated,” the CEC said.
Asserting that the process of delimitation of Assembly constituencies has been done in Jammu and Kashmir, the Chief Election Commissioner said the exercise of fixing, re-arranging Polling Stations, appointment of Returning Officers, Assistant Electoral Returning Officers (AEROs) and rest of the formalities have also been completed.
“We are of the view that wherever these things are completed, elections become due and they must be held,” Kumar said.
He, however, didn’t specify any date or month when J&K would go to polls.
The delimitation process in J&K was completed last year. The Delimitation Commission headed by Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, (a retired Judge of the Supreme Court of India) and comprising Sushil Chandra, (then Chief Election Commissioner) and K. K. Sharma, (State Election Commissioner, Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir), had finalised the Delimitation Order for the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir in May last year.
Besides schedule of Assembly election for three States announced by the Election Commission today, the polls are due in Karnataka in April-May and five States–Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram in December this year.
They are also due in Jammu and Kashmir but, as per sources, the Election Commission had to take security assessment from the Union Home Ministry and Jammu and Kashmir administration before taking a call on the elections.
The Commission can also visit the UT or send its representatives for assessment of the situation.
Besides Assembly, the Urban and Rural Local Bodies elections will also become due in Jammu and Kashmir in October-November this year on completion of their five-year term. Elections to both the bodies were held in October-December 2018.
Jammu and Kashmir is without Assembly since June 2018. It was on June 19, 2018 that the BJP had withdrawn support to Mehbooba Mufti headed PDP-led Government leading to imposition of Central rule in erstwhile State.
However, on August 5, 2019, the Central Government had withdrawn special status of J&K and bifurcated erstwhile State into two UTs of J&K and Ladakh. After delimitation of Assembly constituencies, Special Summary Revision was ordered in J&K and final electoral rolls were published on November 25 last year.
Out of 90 seat Assembly given to the Union Territory, Kashmir was given 47 seats and Jammu 43. Of them, nine constituencies have been reserved for Scheduled Castes–six in Jammu region and three in Kashmir and seven for Scheduled Castes, all in Jammu.
There are five Parliamentary Constituencies in the region. The Delimitation Commission has seen the Jammu & Kashmir region as one single Union Territory. Therefore, one of the Parliamentary Constituency has been carved out combining Anantnag region in the Valley and Rajouri & Poonch of Jammu region.
By this reorganization, each Parliamentary Constituency will have an equal number of 18 Assembly constituencies.
PTI adds: The Election Commission today fixed February 16 as the date for the Tripura Assembly polls and February 27 for the elections to the Nagaland and Meghalaya Assemblies, with the counting of votes scheduled for March 2.
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar’s announcement at a press conference here marked the official start of the first round of Assembly polls in the new year, in which nine States are headed for elections, deemed crucial in the run-up to the all-important Lok Sabha contest in 2024.
The three poll-bound Northeastern States may be small in terms of their electoral size but hold larger political significance. While the BJP is pulling out all the stops to retain power in Tripura and expand its footprints in the two other States, the Congress and the Left are trying to recapture their lost influence.
The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) is also making a determined bid to prove its clout outside West Bengal by contesting these polls.
The three State Assemblies have a strength of 60 members each. While the term of the Nagaland Assembly ends on March 12, the terms of the Meghalaya and Tripura Assemblies end on March 15 and March 22 respectively.
Kumar said the EC has decided to wrap the polls in February, taking into account the examinations scheduled in March.
With Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati recently questioning the integrity of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), the CEC noted that many political parties that had expressed doubts over the machines earlier had won elections through the same process.
While Tripura has a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Government, the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) is in power in Nagaland. The National People’s Party (NPP), the only political party from the northeast that has the recognition of a national party, runs the Government in Meghalaya.
The Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) are expected to join hands to take on the BJP in Tripura, where the Left ruled for 25 years while the Congress was its main rival, before the saffron wave swept aside both in the 2018 polls.
The Congress had long been a dominant player in the northeast, before the BJP’s rise to power at the Centre gradually relegated it to a pale shadow of itself.
While the BJP is the junior partner in the Governments in Nagaland and Meghalaya, it has been on an overdrive to strengthen its presence in these States.
BJP president J P Nadda, in his recent address at the saffron party’s national executive, called upon its members to ensure the victory of the party in all the nine State Assembly polls scheduled for this year. He noted that the year is crucial in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Meanwhile, Parties that have complained against the reliability of Electronic Voting Machines too have won elections held using the same device, Rajiv Kumar said today days after BSP leader Mayawati alleged discrepancies in EVMs and called for holding all polls using ballot papers.
Responding to a question on allegations that EVMs can be manipulated, Kumar said, “If the EVM could speak, it would have perhaps said ‘jisne tere sar par tohmat rakhhi hai, maine uske bhi ghar ki laaj rakhhi hai’ (Those who have accused you, I have even looked after them).”
He said following an amendment in the Representation of the People Act, the use of EVMs came into force, hence it is the duty of the poll panel to implement the law.
Kumar noted that several judicial verdicts, including by the Supreme Court, have hailed the EVMs. People who have filed public interest litigations against EVM use have been fined by courts.
Former CEC Sunil Arora too had slammed parties questioning EVMs, saying it should not be used as “political football”.
Kumar recalled that the Commission had published an advertisement in newspapers giving out details of various parties in opposition that have won polls held using the machine.
He said 36,000 papertrail machine (VVPAT) counts have been matched with EVM count and the match between the results of the two have been 100 per cent. He said there has not been a single mismatch, proving the efficacy of the EVMs.
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