Excelsior Correspondent
RAJOURI, Mar 10: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) State Vice President, Advocate Vibodh Gupta today raised the issue of discrimination being meted by the people of Jammu region due to freezing the delimitation of Lok Sabha and Assembly seats till 2026.
Speaking during the mass contact programme, launched for the last two days in Saj, Nerojal, Bawli, Behrot villages, Gupta said, “the State Government has always taken shelter under the Constitutional bar on delimitation of Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies. The discrimination has been done by allotting less number of seats of Lok Sabha and Assembly in Jammu region as compared to Kashmir, ” he added.
He said while Jammu region has two members to the Lok Sabha having 17.63 and 11.52 lakh electorate respectively, Kashmir has three members to the Lok Sabha with 11.71, 11.52 and 12.72 lakh voters respectively.
Vibodh stressed that a gross injustice has been done with the people of Jammu province in general and with the people of Rajouri and Poonch in particular, in the sense that Kashmir has three Lok Sabha seats for 35 lakh electorates and Jammu province has two Lok Sabha seats for 32 lakh plus electorates.
He further said that Rajouri-Poonch had to face a set-back due to present dispensation, if the delimitation was not freezed then a Lok Sabha seat for Rajouri-Poonch region, with nearly nine lakh electorates, would be carved out and the Assembly seats would also be increased automatically.
Commenting on the prevailing situation in Rajouri district, Vibodh said that the Congress Party hand in glove with National Conference has converted it into ‘colonies for minting votes’ only. The people feel frustrated and cheated with the present political system. They want change and for that they are seeing a ray of hope in BJP which will bring them out of this anarchy, he added.
Appealing people to vote massively in favour of Lok Sabha candidate for Jammu-Poonch Parliamentary seat, Jugal Kishore Sharma, Vibodh said, “Jugal Kishore is a sincere and most honest person and I appealed people to vote for him in the coming elections so that he would win with a thumping majority”.