On Monday (December 20), the Delimitation Commission has proposed changes in the seat count of Jammu and Kashmir after redrawing boundaries of Assembly seats and reserved constituencies. The Delimitation exercise has been undertaken under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act using the data available from the 2011 Census.
Bharti Jain, from The Times of India, informed on Twitter that the panel has proposed 6 additional seats for the Jammu region and one additional seat for the Kashmir Valley. As such, the Jammu region will now have a total of 43 assembly seats while the Kashmir Valley will have 47 seats.
The Delimitation Panel has kept the 7 seats for the Scheduled Caste (SC) unchanged. But 9 seats are proposed to be reserved for the Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities. Earlier, the STs had no reservation in the J&K Assembly. The 24 seats that are assigned to PoK and remain vacant, are to remain unchanged.
24 seats will remain in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir
— Bharti Jain (@bhartijainTOI) December 20, 2021
The Delimitation Panel has asked its 5 associate members to submit their suggestion by December 31 this year. The members include Jugal Kishore and Dr Jitendra Singh from BJP, Farooq Abdullah, Mohammad Akbar Lone, and Justice (Retd) Hasnain Masoodi from National Conference. Earlier, the NC Parliamentarians had not attended meetings over the objection to the J&K Reorganisation Act.
