Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, Dec 28: The Election Commission will publish electoral rolls of Jammu and Kashmir after summary revision lasting four months on January 11, 2016. Number of the voters has recorded nearly 3 lakh increase this year to touch 74 lakh.
Official sources told the Excelsior that entire exercise like addition, deletion and corrections of electorates after inviting objections and claims has almost been completed by the Election Department of Jammu and Kashmir taking January 1, 2016 as cutoff date for inclusion of new voters, who turned 18 by the date. Electoral rolls of other States will also be published the same day.
“The electorates of Jammu and Kashmir were likely to reach 74 lakh after final publication of electoral rolls following summary revision. The electoral rolls will be finally published on January 11, 2016,” they said.
The State had about 71 lakh voters before summary revision of electoral rolls started on September 1, 2015. After summary revision, there has been an increase of nearly three lakh voters across the State.
“The increase was quite significant,” sources said, pointing out that as per 2011 census, population of Jammu and Kashmir was 1.25 crores.
The Jammu and Kashmir has major advantage of summary revision of electoral rolls this year.
CEO J&K Shantmanu supervised the entire exercise.
According to sources, the Election Department will segregate electoral rolls of areas falling under civic bodies, both urban and rural, the elections for which were proposed to be held by the Government in March (Urban Local Bodies) and May-June (Panchayats).
“The voter lists of Municipalities and Panchayats will also be prepared separately from the summary revision so that if the process for elections was started before April 1, there will be no need for fresh revision of electoral rolls for the Municipalities,” sources said.
They added that updated voter lists for Municipalities will be ready after electoral rolls were published following summary revision on January 11 and there will be no revision of voter lists if the process for Municipal elections was set into motion before April 1.
The Government has already announced that it would hold elections to Municipalities in March and Panchayats in May-June.
“The electoral rolls for all 78 Municipalities including two Corporations (Jammu and Srinagar), six Councils (Kathua, Udhampur, Poonch, Anantnag, Baramulla and Sopore) and 70 Municipalities will be completely ready after publication of final electoral rolls on January 11,” sources said, adding that similar would be the position for all 4098 Panchayats in the State.
J&K has 4098 Sarpanch constituencies (Panchayats) and 29402 Panch constituencies taking total number of Sarpanch and Panch segments to 33,500.
However, as the Government was planning to hold elections to Panchayats in May-June, the Election Department will have to go for fresh revision of electoral rolls for Panchayats with April 1, 2016 as cutoff date for inclusion of new voters.
As per the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution, there were four cutoff dates for revision and updating electoral rolls before undertaking exercise for holding any election like Lok Sabha, Assembly, Panchayats and Municipalities. The cutoff dates included January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1.
The Government had recently announced that it would hold Municipal elections in the State in March and Panchayats in May-June. Elections to Municipalities were last held in February 2005 and the Municipalities had completed their term in March 2010. However, the previous NC-Congress Government didn’t hold elections to the Municipalities, leading to blockade of funds running into several crores by the Government of India.
However, elections to the Panchayats were held in May-June 2011 by the NC-Congress Government after nearly 37 years. The Panchayats will complete their term in July. The present Government also proposed to complete the Panchayat elections by having elected bodies like Block Development Councils (BDCs) and District Planning and Development Boards (DPDBs). The election to these two institutions were not held by the previous Government.
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