A day later, Jammu administration repeals order on new voter registration

On Tuesday, Deputy Commissioner and District Election Officer for Jammu, Avny Lavasa, had issued the order to benefit people residing in a particular tehsil of Jammu district for more than a year but who lacked any documentary proof of residence to get registered as voters in the ongoing special summary revision of electoral rolls in Jammu and Kashmir. The order had led to strong opposition from non-BJP mainstream parties in the Union Territory.

On Thursday, the decision to withdraw the order again led to contrasting reactions from the BJP and its opposition Peoples Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) leaders.

J&K BJP chief Ravinder Raina said that although the order has been withdrawn, as per Constitutional provisions, “no one can stop anybody from getting registered as a voter at a particular place”.

In contrast, Congress chief spokesperson for UT, Ravinder Sharma, pointed out that the party is not opposed to enrolment of new voters as per provisions of the law, but it had protested what he called was the Jammu administration’s attempts to “register even those who already were registered as voters elsewhere the country”, and who were in Jammu temporarily for work.

Senior leader of CPI(M) and PAGD spokesperson, M Y Tarigami, questioned the issuance of such an order in the first place. “It is surprising that such an unwarranted order was issued. If the order is revoked, a copy should be immediately shared with the public,” he told PTI.

BJP’s Raina and Congress’s Sharma both quoted the Representation of the People (RP) Act, 1951, to prove their contention.

Raina said that as per provisions of the law, any long-residing resident of a place is entitled to shift his/her vote to the place of stay from his/her place of birth. “There is nothing wrong (in the now-rescinded order). The Constitution of India gives one the right to get enrolled as a voter at the place of his/her choice,” he said.

Quoting provisions of RP Act, Congress’s Sharma maintained that even owning a house at a particular place does not bring a person in the category of “ordinarily residing” at the place if one’s permanent residence is somewhere else.

By enrolling people as voters in Jammu on the ground of their stay for more than one year without any mechanism to check whether they have shifted permanently from their previous place of residence and have cancelled voter registration there, the administration would be “virtually creating a set of floating voters”, he said. These same voters, the Congress leader argued, could move to another state or UT for work in future and get themselves enrolled as voters in the new place of residence after staying there for just over an year.

On Wednesday, before the order was withdrawn later in the day, the National Conference had called the BJP “insecure” for extending voting rights to “non-locals”. The party criticised the government for going ahead with its plan to add 25 lakh “non-local voters” in J&K.

PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti said that the order would include a large number of people as voters, which will harm the region’s Dogra culture and leave the region’s businesses, jobs and resources skewed.

J&K Congress president Vikar Rasool Wani had called the BJP’s “game plan to dilute” the power of local voters.