Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, Feb 12: The Returning Officer for Legislative Council elections today issued notifications for holding seven separate elections to 11 seats of the Upper House—eight in biennial election i.e. the regular vacancies arising after completion of six years term of the members and three for by-elections that arose following election of three MLCs to the Legislative Assembly in last year’s elections.
Legislative Assembly Secretary Mohammad Ramzan, who has been designated as the Returning Officer for the elections by the Election Commission of India, issued the notifications under which seven elections would be held for 11 seats i.e. one election for four seats of Jammu province, second election for two seats of Kashmir province, third and fourth elections for one seat each reserved for Leh and Kargil districts within Kashmir province and three elections for an equal number of vacancies for by-elections, which were necessitated due to election of Devender Singh Rana and Abdul Majeed Bhat Laram (both NC) and Mohammad Ashraf Mir (PDP) to the Legislative Assembly.
The candidates can file their nomination papers till February 18 afternoon before the Secretary Assembly and the Deputy Secretary Assembly, who has been designated as the Assistant Returning Officer. Scrutiny of nominations will be held on February 19 while the candidates can withdraw their nomination papers till February 21.
The election, if contested, will be held on March 2 from 9 am to 4 pm. The counting will be taken up the same day at 5 pm and results declared by around 7 pm. All newly elected 87 MLAs comprised Electoral College for the elections.
Official sources told the Excelsior that only candidates from Jammu province can file their nomination papers for the election to be held for four seats of Jammu province while only candidates from Kashmir province can contest two seats of that region for which another election will be held. The candidates from Leh and Kargil districts will be eligible only two separate elections to be held for two seats (one each for Leh and Kargil), which were reserved from amongst four seats of Kashmir province. All these eight seats were falling vacant between March 9 and 16.
The elections for eight biennial vacancies are being held as an equal number of MLCs are completing their term between March 9 and 16. They are Ajatshatru Singh (NC now BJP), BR Kundal (Congress), Syed Asgar Ali (PDP) and Khalid Najib Suhrawardhy (NC), all four in Jammu province for which one election will be held, Narboo Gialchan (Congress), a seat reserved for Ladakh tehsil of Kashmir province for which one election will be held, Aga Syed Ahmad Rizvi (NC), a seat reserved for Kargil tehsil of Kashmir province, for which one election will be held, Vijay Bakaya (NC) and Syed Mohammad Rafiq Shah (NPP now PDP), two seats of Kashmir province for which one election will be held.
Three separate by-elections will be held for three vacancies, which have arisen due to the election of three MLCs to the Legislative Assembly.
One election will be held for the vacancy of NC leader Devender Singh Rana from amongst the candidates of Jammu province. The winner would get term of four years only. Second election will be held against the vacancy of Abdul Majeed Bhat Laram (NC) from amongst the candidates of Kashmir province. The winner would get term of four years only. The third by-election will be held for the vacancy of Mohammad Ashraf Mir (PDP) from amongst the candidates of Kashmir province. The winner will get term of two years only.
As per the Election Laws, the winners of by-elections get only remaining term of the MLCs, whose resignation leads to creation of the vacancy while for eight seats falling vacant under biennial elections, which are called regular vacancies, the candidates get full term of six years.
Excelsior had only a day before exclusively reported that seven elections will be held for 11 seats of Legislative Council and the PDP-BJP combine can easily win nine to 10 seats.
Apart from this, the new Government also had to nominate eight MLCs to the Legislative Council through the Governor.
Sources said the PDP-BJP combine would be in a position to win nine to 10 seats comfortably going by the equations in the Legislative Assembly. The prospectus of the newly formed alliance would get further boost if the Government is formed before the elections as the Alliance can nominate two women MLAs to the Assembly, who also have the right to cast votes for the Legislative Council elections though they can’t vote for Rajya Sabha polls.
Just like the Alliance won two seats of Shamsher Singh Manhas (BJP) and Mir Mohammad Fayaz (PDP) for Rajya Sabha without much contest as separate notifications had been issued for them, the Alliance candidates would win five seats comfortably for which five separate elections are being held including three by-election vacancies of Rana, Laram and Ashraf Mir and two seats reserved for Leh and Kargil districts being vacated by Narboo Gialchan and Aga Syed Ahmad Rizvi of Congress and NC respectively.
On one election for four seats of Jammu province, the PDP-BJP alliance would be in a position to wrest three seats while NC-Congress combine together can win one seat. The PDP-BJP, which have confirmed support of 57 MLAs can get their candidates polled 19 votes each while NC-Congress combine have maximum of 30 votes (which were polled by Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad in recent Rajya Sabha elections). Even if NC-Congress combine split the votes to two candidates, they can manage the victory of one candidate only as PDP-BJP combine nominees would have 19 votes each.
For seventh election for two seats of Kashmir division, the votes could be repeated just like February 7 results for two seats of Rajya Sabha unless the election takes place after the Government formation and PDP-BJP get two extra votes of nominated women MLAs. In this notification, the PDP-BJP combine would be sure of one seat and could get even both with the help of nominated women MLAs and if they managed to get one Independent out of three, who voted for Azad, on their side.
Overall, sources said, the PDP-BJP combine would easily win nine out of 11 seats on which elections will be held and even 10 with some extra support.
Eight nominated MLCs, who are completing their term in March-April are Amrit Malhotra (Chairman-Congress), Javed Rana (former Deputy Chairman-NC, who has ceased to be the MLC after his election to the Assembly), Sheikh Ghulam Rasool (NC, now in PDP), Subash Gupta (Congress, who had completed his term last year), Ajay Sadhotra (National Conference), Bashir Ahmad Magray (Congress), Ravinder Sharma (Congress) and Ghulam Qadir Pardesi (National Conference).
For these vacancies, no election will be held and the PDP-BJP combine can nominate their candidates to the Council through the Governor as is the set procedure.
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