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| Photo Credit: Imran Nissar
The final panchayat electoral rolls for Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) were published on Monday (January 20, 2025) indicating the Centre’s inclination to hold the local body elections soon. The Assembly election was held in the Union Territory in September last year but Statehood is yet to be restored.
The State Election Commission, J&K said the final list of voters eligible to vote in the panchayat polls stood at 70,00,670, with the addition of 3,41,072 names and deletion of 1,10,768 names.
The total number of voters for the 2018 panchayat polls in the former State of J&K was 58,54,208. The panchayat elections were last held in the former State after a gap of seven years and a total of 27,281 panches and sarpanches were elected then. There were 12,776 vacant sarpanch and panch seats as elections could not be held due to security reasons back then.
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A senior government official told The Hindu that though the electoral rolls had been revised, the report of The Jammu and Kashmir Local Bodies Dedicated Backward Classes Commission was awaited, which is crucial for reserving Other Backward Classes (OBC) seats in the panchayat.
The tenure of the Backward Classes Commission, which was constituted in June last year, ended on December 31, 2024 and there is no notification in the public domain extending its term.
J&K ceased to have panchayats from January 9, 2024 after the five-year term of around 30,000 local representatives came to an end.
Another government source said based on the report of the Commission, the rationalisation of panchayat seats will be done, accommodating the changes made in the reservation structure in the U.T. in the past one year.
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“The panchayat elections will happen soon, maybe in the next one month. The process of reservation of OBC and SC/ST seats is on,” the second government source said.
The first government official quoted above explained that the Commission will have to identify the panchayats requiring OBC reservation. “The reservation has to be marked up to the village level. Here, the criteria of mass reservation, 4% or 8% applicable jobs or educational institutions across the board does not apply. They will have to determine which area has an OBC population,” said the official.
In February 2024, the Parliament passed a law to provide reservation to OBCs in panchayat and municipal bodies in Jammu and Kashmir.
Presently, there is no reservation for OBCs in local body seats in the U.T.
Additionally, around the same time, the Parliament passed another legislation to include Pahari Ethnic Group, Gadda Brahman, the Paddari Tribe, and the Koli communities to the Scheduled Tribes list of J&K and to add the Valmiki community to the Scheduled Castes list.
The special status of J&K under Article 370 of the Constitution was revoked by the Parliament on August 5, 2019 and the former State was split into two Union Territories — J&K and Ladakh.
A statement by the State Election Commission said that the annual revision of panchayat electoral rolls was concluded on Monday with January 1, 2025 as the qualifying date. “Additions, deletions and changes in the entries of electoral rolls were incorporated during the annual revision of panchayat electoral rolls which was started on November 11, 2024 with the publication of draft electoral rolls,” the statement said.
It added that the revision of electoral rolls is a continuous process and all eligible voters who do not have their names in the list can get themselves enrolled by filling the requisite form.
Published – January 20, 2025 11:55 pm IST
