WHEN Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Lt Governor Manoj Sinha said Tuesday that municipal elections in the Union Territory would be held only after a delimitation exercise for the wards was done, it was the first mention of this being a requirement.
It was also an official confirmation that the polls would be delayed indefinitely, as the delimitation exercise cannot be finished in less than a year.
Mainstream political parties in Kashmir attributed the delay in yet another electoral process in J&K, which has been without an elected government since 2018, to the BJP’s apprehensions. “With the terms of various municipal corporations, sarpanches and panches ending soon, not even one of the three-tiered democracy that the government claims to have established in J&K will be left standing,” former chief minister and National Conference (NC) vice-president Omar Abdullah said Tuesday, while talking to reporters at Tangmarg, adding that the BJP was afraid of facing the people and the government at the Centre was taking decisions accordingly.
At an NC convention in Pattan Wednesday, Omar further said, “Why did they start talking of delimitation (of wards) now, when they knew that the next municipal polls were scheduled for 2023? Couldn’t they have started the process six-eight months ago? Either the BJP wants to end people’s hope in representative politics, or they are scared and want to save themselves, along with their B, C and D teams (a reference to other parties).”
While the term of the Srinagar Municipal Corporation ended on November 5, that of the Jammu civic body ended on Tuesday. The tenures of the other civic bodies are also ending soon.
NC spokesperson Imran Nabi said, “The problem is that when there are no elected representatives, you are handing over the government to bureaucrats. How can they be an alternative?… Moreover, the entire J&K bureaucracy is from outside the region. They have no idea about the geography, language, tradition and culture of the area. How can they devise policies for the people?”
Former minister and senior PDP leader Naeem Akhtar said the delay signified an “erasure of democracy even at its lowest level”. “Now, even the lowest level of democracy — which had once been projected across the world as a grassroots representational system that was replacing the state Assembly — is being denied to the people,” he said. “It (grassroots democracy) has been used as justification for not holding Assembly elections since 2018. The Centre boasted of having 30,000 elected representatives in ULBs and Panchayati Raj bodies. Now, even they will be gone. One the one hand, the Centre says peace has returned. On the other hand, it doesn’t even allow panchayat elections. They are finding new ways to deny and delay every election.”
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Akhtar added that while his party believes that neither the larger J&K issue, nor democracy, is only about holding elections, these are important for running day-to-day affairs. “Most likely, J&K will continue to be a bureaucratic and security set-up in the foreseeable future,” he said.
J&K’s last elected government fell in 2018, when the BJP walked out of its ruling coalition with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The Centre had earlier said that the Assembly elections in J&K would be conducted once the delimitation of Assembly segments was over. But now it has been over a year and a half since that exercise was completed, without the elections being held.
In January this year, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said Assembly elections in J&K would be held keeping in mind “various factors, including weather and security concerns”.
Meanwhile, the Centre has been claiming that there has been a dramatic improvement in the security situation in the Valley.
Grassroots elected bodies in J&K
Last municipal elections: 2018
Municipal elections before that: 2005
Total municipal bodies in J&K: 78
No of municipal corporations: 2 (Srinagar, Jammu)
No of municipal councils: 19
No of municipal committees: 57
Last panchayat elections: 2018
Panchayat elections before that: 2001, 2011
No of sarpanches/village panchayats: 4,490
Number of panches: 35,096
