Amid terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, the Election Commission of India (ECI) may first wait for the union home ministry’s peace assessment before going ahead with the poll planning, an official aware of the matter has told News18.
While BJP leaders had been saying that the polls may take place in the next couple of months, the ECI is yet to make any such official announcement about elections in the union territory (UT).
‘First, there should be peace’
Speaking to News18, an ECI official aware of the matter said: “First, there should be peace in the area, then only a team of EC members will go to the UT. We will see and discuss everything else after that. But first, the ministry of home affairs (MHA) will tell us that the situation is peaceful in the area.”
Further, BJP sources have also told News18 that the union home minister has held a round of meetings with the administrative wing and sought feedback on how soon the elections can be held.
Last month, BJP national general secretary Tarun Chugh said that hurdles in the path of holding assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir had been removed and polls would be held shortly.
In October 2022, union home minister Amit Shah said that elections will be held in J&K soon after the final electoral rolls are announced.
Delimitation, electoral roll revision done
In May 2022, the newly redrawn boundaries, names, and the number of assembly constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir, as ordered by the Delimitation Commission, came into effect.
Out of the 90 assembly constituencies in the region, 43 will be part of the Jammu region and 47 of Kashmir. The delimitation panel has given six additional assembly seats to the Jammu region and one to Kashmir.
This paved the way for conducting the first assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir since it was made a union territory in 2019.
Further, the electoral roll revision for the UT was also done, and in November 2022, the final electoral roll was published with the highest-ever addition of more than 7.72 lakh voters.
The final electoral roll has a total of 83,59,771 electors — 42,91,687 males, 40,67,900 females, and 184 of the third gender.
The release of the electoral roll was also a crucial step towards holding the assembly polls in the union territory.
The UT is yet to go for polls since Article 370 provisions were abrogated and Jammu and Kashmir was bifurcated into two union territories in 2019.
On January 1, a terror attack took place in the Dhangri village of Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri that killed seven people. The next day, two more people were killed and nine others injured in a powerful improvised explosive device blast in the village. The IED was planted by terrorists before fleeing.
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