Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 8: Referring to the initiation of delimitation process in J&K, Harsh Dev Singh, Chairman-JKNPP and former Minister today said that it would be meaningful only if the Assembly and Parliament seats of Jammu region were increased.
He said that demand for delimitation had been persistently raised by NPP besides other civil society groups in view of a highly biased treatment doled out to Jammu region in the matter of allocation of seats. “While Jammu region with a geographical area of 26293 square kilometers had been assigned merely 37 Assembly seats, 46 seats in the Assembly had been allocated to the highly mollycoddled Kashmir region with an area of 15953 square kilometers,” he said, adding that in Kashmir region, the average size of an Assembly Constituency was 346 square kilometers as against an average size of 710 square kilometers for a Jammu region Assembly Constituency.
Harsh Dev Singh said that under the J&K Reorganization Act, Jammu region is entitled a higher number of seats vis-à-vis Kashmir in view of the criteria laid down in Section 60 of the said Act. He elucidated that the new criteria laid down in the said Act provided that ‘physical features, existing boundaries of administrative units, facilities of communication and convenience of the public’ shall be the factors to be taken into consideration while delimiting the constituencies in the new UT.
“The population factor which was the major consideration in the erstwhile law on delimitation has been dropped in the Reorganization Act 2019. And the population factor will matter only in the constituencies to be reserved for SC and ST so as to ensure that only those seats are reserved where the proportion of their population to the total population in largest. With the new criteria weighing heavily in favour of Jammu region, it is entitled to at least 50 seats in Assembly and minimum of 3 seats in Parliament as well,” he explained.
Seeking early conclusion of the delimitation process, Singh expressed the hope that the aspirations of the people of Jammu region expecting a fair deal in political power would be duly honoured in a time bound, transparent manner.
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