Rekha Chowdhary
This new year is election year. While the Parliamentary election is around the corner, we can be expecting the Assembly election after that – more so because the Supreme Court has given the deadline of September 2024. It will be after a gap of ten years that the Assembly election would be taking place. Last time, J&K saw a long gap in electoral process was during the period of militancy. For nine years Assembly election could not take place at that time.
Since 2014, when the last Assembly election took place in J&K, much water has flown in the river Jhelum, Tawi (and of course , river Indus). Substantial changes have taken place with regard to the very structure of J&K and these changes have direct implications for the elections and electoral process. The State, since the last election, has been reorganised – bifurcated into two Union Territories. One major implication of this reorganisation is that Ladakh is no more a part of J&K. It is a neighbouring Union Territory.

ELECTION WATCH 2024

More importantly, by another implication of reorganisation, J&K has lost its status as the State of the Indian Union and it is at present a UT. Of course, there is a commitment of the Central government to restore its status as a state, however, one doesn’t know for sure how soon is that going to be. For the next election, in all probabilities, it is going to be a UT. And this status of being a UT has certainly a number of implications for the structure of the Legislature and its election.
What differentiates the UT of J&K at present from the UT of Ladakh is that while the latter is a UT without a legislature, the UT of Jammu and Kashmir has a legislature. However, this legislature is quite different from what it used to be till 2019. Unlike the previous legislatures, which were bi-cameral and comprised of two houses – the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council, the Legislature now will be unicameral, having only the lower house or the Legislative Assembly. The provision of Upper House or the Legislative Council is no more there. Another substantial change that one can see in the legislature is in relation to its tenure. Instead of six-year tenure, that the state legislature used to have since 1977, it is going to have five year tenure. It was during the period of emergency that the tenure of Legislative Assemblies and Parliament was increased from five to six years. At that time, the J&K state also adopted the provision of six year tenure for Legislative Assembly of this state. While this change was reversed in rest of India soon, but J&K continued to have six years tenure. This is now changed and like every other Legislative Assembly, J&K will also have five years’ tenure.
The composition of the Legislative Assembly is also quite changed. The effective seats on which the elections would take place in J&K till 2014 election, was 87. Of these 83 seats were located in two regions of Jammu and Ladakh, 4 seats were reserved for Ladakh. With 24 seats reserved for POJK, the formal strength of Legislative Assembly of J&K State was 111. The Reorganisation Act has increased the number of elected members for J&K from 83 to 90. The formal strength of Legislative Assembly with 24 reserved seats for POJK has now gone up to 114. (This excludes the nominated members).
The effective strength of the Assembly will now be 95. Of these, 90 member would be elected and 5 members will be nominated. The provision of nomination existed even in earlier Legislative Assemblies as two women were nominated after every election. This provision has been continued and of the five nominated members, two will be women. Provision for three other other nominated members meanwhile has been introduced – two of these would be representing the Kashmiri Pandits who had to migrate en masse from Kashmir during the period of militancy and one would be representing the POJK Refugees. Since one of the two nominated Kashmiri Pandits has to be a woman, the effective strength of nominated women in the Legislature would be three.
Importantly, all the nominated members have voting rights in the Assembly. This will have implications for the formation of government. With a total strength of 95 (elected and nominated) members in all, for a party or a combination of parties to form the government and to retain the confidence of the legislature, there would be requirement of support of 48 members.
Another new feature of the legislative composition is the reservation of seats for the Scheduled Tribes. While the SCs were having reservation in the Legislative Assembly in the earlier set up and 7 constituencies were reserved for them, there was no reservation for STs. Now, 9 constituencies in total have been reserved for STs – of which 6 are located in Jammu region and 3 in Kashmir.
Besides these, there are other changes which are quite crucial in nature. What has drastically changed in the new composition of the legislature is the regional balance. Till 2014, Kashmir region enjoyed the preponderance of numbers in the Assembly with 46 members as against 37 members of Jammu region. With a difference of nine members between the two regions, the formation of the government certainly led to a regional balance in favour of Kashmir region. However, now this gap is significantly reduced to four. As against 47 member of Kashmir region, Jammu region has 43 members.
How all these changes are going to work in the electoral process would be interesting to watch. A very real change, however is going to come with the women’s reservation. The provision of 33% reservation for women in the Legislative Assembly has already been formalised for J&K, like elsewhere in the country. However, this will become effective at a later date. Certainly when this happens, it would change the composition of power structure in a very effective manner. In J&K where the number of elected women has routinely remained around 2-3 and where one hardly sees a woman in the ministry, it will be game changing situation when 30 of the Assembly members would be women.
The election to the J&K Assembly, with so many changes is certainly going to be interesting to watch. It will be interesting to see how political parties are going to be impacted by the changes; how new reservations are going to effect the electoral outcome; how regional equations are going to change. It will also be interesting to see what would be the new electoral narratives, especially in Kashmir Valley after the abrogation of special constitutional status of J&K. Also interesting to see what kind of issues are going to be raised during the electoral campaign.This is certainly going to be an interesting process and in this newly started series under the title of ‘Election Watch’ we are going to see the electoral process in J&K from varied angles. We will analyse the political parties, the electoral narratives and issues, the leaders and leadership questions, the regional and sub-regional electoral responses, the political responses of various electoral categories including women, SCs, STs etc.
(Feedback welcome at rekchowdhary@gmail.com)

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