<\/p>\n
News<\/span><\/b>:\u00a0 Recently, the\u202ffifth delimitation commission chaired by <\/span>Justice Ranjana Desai<\/span><\/b>, <\/span>furnished its award for Jammu and Kashmir. The Commission\u2019s award <\/span>has been severely criticized across the field.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The recommendation of delimitation commissions cannot be <\/span>modified<\/span><\/b> or <\/span>changed<\/span><\/b> by Parliament or the concerned legislative assembly.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n – The Poonch and Rajouri in Jammu division has been clubbed with Anantnag in the Kashmir division<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n – The Commission has allocated 47 seats to Kashmir and 43 seats to Jammu. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n – The Commission recommended \u201cat least\u201d two seats on a nomination basis for the Kashmiri Pandit community. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The <\/span>constituencies<\/span><\/b> have been made <\/span>coterminous<\/span><\/b> with the <\/span>district boundaries<\/span><\/b>. Hitherto, 18 assembly constituencies were grouped into each parliamentary constituency. This arithmetic formula distorted the entire system of democratic representation across areas.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n First, it was constituted during a <\/span>statutory freeze<\/span><\/b> on the increase or decrease of the parliamentary and legislative assembly seats up till the population Census of 2026.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Second, this is the <\/span>only<\/span><\/b> commission that has not redrawn the constituencies in accordance with the Delimitation Act of 2002. The commission instead invoked <\/span>Section 63<\/span><\/b> of <\/span>the J&K Reorganisation Act, 2019,<\/span><\/b> which stipulated to increase the number of seats from present 83 to 90.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Third, the Commission was given the delimitation mandate for <\/span>five states<\/span><\/b>, but the mandate of <\/span>five north-eastern states<\/span><\/b> were withdrawn from its purview and its mandate was restricted to only <\/span>Jammu & Kashmir (UT<\/span><\/b>). Finally, it will be the <\/span>first delimitation<\/span><\/b> award in the <\/span>country\u2019s legislative history<\/span><\/b> that will not be placed before <\/span>the legislative assembly of the UT<\/span><\/b> that has been delimited. The elected legislators of J&K will not have the opportunity to approve the rules for their representation.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Fourth, It is argued that the commission\u2019s award can lead the political binary of Jammu vis a vis Kashmir to become a <\/span>divisive bipolarity<\/span><\/b>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Fifth, <\/span>Kashmir division<\/span><\/b> having a 56% share of the population will have only a 52% seat share. On the other hand, <\/span>Jammu division<\/span><\/b> with a 44% share in the population gets a 48% share in the legislative representation. Jammu has got an <\/span>additional seat<\/span><\/b>. In the process, the <\/span>cardinal principle<\/span><\/b> of \u201c<\/span>one man, one vote\u201d<\/span><\/b> has been bid adieu in J&K.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Sixth, the seats allocated to sub-regions referred in Section 60(2) (b) of the J&K Reorganisation Act 2019 are <\/span>unacceptably distortionary<\/span><\/b>. There are <\/span>four distinct regions<\/span><\/b>: The <\/span>Jhelum Val<\/span><\/b>ley (which includes South Kashmir, Central Kashmir and North Kashmir), <\/span>Chenab Valley<\/span><\/b> (comprising Kisthwar, Doda, Ramban and Reasi), <\/span>Pir Panjal<\/span><\/b> (Rajouri and Poonch), and the <\/span>Tawi basin or the plains<\/span><\/b> (of Jammu, Kathua and Udhampur). These areas include \u201ccommunities of interest\u201d \u2014 common physical features, ethnicity, religion, and language.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Seventh. While the <\/span>two administrative divisions<\/span><\/b> of the UT, Jammu and Kashmir, may be relevant for developmental policy planning, these are not so for <\/span>democratic representation purposes<\/span><\/b>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Eight, the <\/span>framework of legislative representation<\/span><\/b> proposed by the commission will prevent the formation of a <\/span>stable elected government<\/span><\/b> in J&K in the near future. The elections will lead to formation of <\/span>fractious patchwork coalition<\/span><\/b> and at worst a perpetually <\/span>hung assembly<\/span><\/b>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ninth, the award can become a precedent for award of other delimitation commissions across other states.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Source<\/span><\/b>: The post is based on an article \u201cDelimitation Commission fails people of J&K, hurts democracy<\/strong>\u201d published in the Indian Express<\/strong> on 07<\/strong><\/span>th<\/strong> May 2022<\/strong>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" News:\u00a0 Recently, the\u202ffifth delimitation commission chaired by Justice Ranjana Desai, furnished its award for Jammu and Kashmir. The Commission\u2019s award has been severely criticized across the field.\u00a0 Nature of Award of the Delimitation Commission\u00a0 The recommendation of delimitation commissions cannot be modified or changed by Parliament or the concerned legislative assembly.\u00a0\u00a0 – The Poonch and… Continue reading Delimitation Commission fails people of J&K, hurts democracy\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10500],"class_list":["post-183268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-indian-express","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704908201},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Nature of Award of the Delimitation Commission<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n
What has been good in the commission\u2019s award?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n
What are the issues with the awards given by the fifth delimitation commission?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n