ED to reserve several new wards of JMC, SMC, other Councils

Neeraj Rohmetra
JAMMU, Feb 18: Setting into motion the process for holding of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) elections in State, the Election Department has formulated the proposal for notifying the wards to be reserved for Women, Schedule Castes (SC), and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the Municipal Corporations, Municipal Councils and Municipal Committee of the State.
According to the proposal mooted by the office of Chief Electoral Officer, Umang Narula, the number of wards reserved for various categories (SC, ST and Women) in each Municipal body have been fixed on the basis of the prescribed ratio under the Act for each category.
Presently, while Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) had 71 wards, Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) has 75 wards. About 33.33% of the total numbers of wards are reserved in both the Corporations and therefore, while 25 wards are reserved for women in SMC, 24 are reserved in JMC.
Interestingly, according to the proposed notification, several wards of JMC, which were earlier represented in 2005 ULB polls by Mayors and Deputy Mayors are going to be declared Reserved on the basis of Roaster system in the current year.
Prominent among those who were members of the Jammu Municipal Corporation in 2005 and whose wards are likely to be declared reserved included former Mayor of BJP, Kavinder Gupta of ward no. 36, who had served three terms as JMC Mayor. Former Mayor of Congress — Manmohan Singh Chowdhary, representing ward no. 29 and Narinder Singh of ward no. 1 also fall in the list of new reserved wards this year.
Further, ward number 3, which was represented by Dharam Vir Singh Jamwal of National Conference (NC), who had three terms of Deputy Mayor has also been proposed to be declared as reserved.
Ward no. 70 represented by former Deputy Mayor, Rani Gargi Bleoria earlier in 2005 has been dereserved this year.
Ward numbers of JMC, which are likely to be reserved for women under Open Category based on the Roaster system in the current year are 1,4,5,7,9,15,18,23,26,27,29,32,36,42,43,46,49,59,62,65 and 68. All of the 24 wards, which were reserved in the year 2005, when the last ULB elections were held have been declared Open this time. Also, eight wards have been reserved for SC category and these included Ward no. 13,19,20,40,41,48,55 and 56.
In case of SMC, the 25 wards which are likely to be reserved under Women category (Open) included number 1,4,7,10,13,16,19,22,25,28,31,34,37,40,43,46,49,52,55,58,61,64,67,70 and 73. All the wards, which were reserved under this category in earlier held polls, have been declared open.
Elaborating on the principles adopted in determining the total number of reserved wards for each Municipal body category-wise, as well as procedure adopted for identification of specific wards being reserved, the Notice says, “for women, the Act provides for reservation of wards at the rate of one-third of the total number of seats for each Municipal body”.
“This includes reservation for SC Women candidate and ST Women candidates at the rate of one-third of the number of seats reserved for Scheduled Casts and Scheduled Tribes respectively, in each Municipal body. The number of Wards to be reserved for Women (Open category), Women (SC Category) and Women (ST Category) foreach Municipal Body has been fixed according after applying the principle of mathematical rounding off”.
“The Jammu & Kashmir Municipal Act, 2000 and Jammu & Kashmir Municipal Corporation Act, 2000, amended from time to time provided 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 population of the SCs and STs in the area falling under the Municipal Body. For this purpose the population of SCs and STs in the Municipal area as per the data provided by the Deputy Commissioners for all Municipal Committees/ Councils has been accepted. In the case of Municipal Corporations of Srinagar and Jammu the data as available from Census 2001 has been used.
The identification of wards to be reserved by rotation for SCs and STs, is on the basis of SC/ST population of the identified wards in descending order as provided by the Deputy Commissioners, after excluding the wards reserved in 2005 elections. The allocation of specific wards to be reserved for women (Open Category), Women (SC Category) and Women (ST Category) has been done on a three point roaster system for each category separately of Women (Open Category), Women (SC Category) and Women (ST Category).
This 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.
In February 2005, the State Government had conducted municipal elections after a gap of 26 years as per the delimitation made under SRO 291 for the electoral wards and the newly elected bodies emerged across the State.
Subsequently, Urban Local Bodies elections were due in State during the month of February 2010 afer the expiry of their five year term but the present regime has been delaying same on one and other pretext.
In, September 2012, the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had declared that Block Development Council (BDC) polls followed by Urban Local Bodies elections would be held soon. However, the BDC polls had to be postponed after Congress party made the process conditional to introduction of 73rd Amendment. Thereafter, the State Government came up with an ordinance to cancel the entire process.

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