After the visit of the Delimitation Commission from July 6 to 9, 2021 some leaders from J&K were quoted as having suggested/raised questions on the wisdom of the Election Commission of India for deciding in 2020 to go for regular delimitation of the single member segments of the would be Legislative Assembly of UT of J&K pleading that (i)when delimitation in whole of country has been deferred till the population figures / census details for any census conducted after 2026AD are known,(ii)when the present government in centre had been advocating for One India One Constitution and like, then why Delimitation for UT of J&K ?. Since question has been raised also by a ‘senior leader’ it cannot be taken as a question raised casually and surely has some ’emotional’ bits more for political consumption since the questions do not stand to a legal test and hence need be properly addressed ( from constitutional/ legal aspects as well ) for undoing any confusion that the statements of the like might have created for innocent / simple common population of India / UT of J&K.
The present Delimitation and its scope could be well understood from the following :
- The would be Legislative Assembly of UT of J&K is to have 90 single member Assembly Segments and hence the Legislative Assembly cannot be constituted without holding regular elections which cannot be done without locating the segments / MLA seats. Hence delimitation has to be done in detail.
- In the Legislative Assembly UT of J&K there is reservation of seats for Schedule Tribe also ( which was not in the erstwhile State of J&K ) like Schedule Caste. And hence Delimitation is needed (i) for determining the total reserved seats for ST and SC (ii) pinning the individual MLA seats to be reserved on the basis of better concentration of SC/ST population as the case may me.
- By the 42th Constitution Amenendment Act of 1976 it was decided that no increase of decrease in the number of Seats of MPs in Lok Sabha for States / UTs or the LAs of States/ UTs will be done on the basis of population as per any new census after 1971 census till the results of census conducted after 2020 ( later amended as 2026 vide Constitution Eighty Fourth Amendment Act, 2002 ) are available. There was no direct bar on reservation and relocation of SC/ST seats and hence delimitations had been done after that as far as the reservation of seats for SC/ST were concerned and the Delimitation Act 2002 did mention Census 2001 figures for determining the number of SC/ST seats and relocating them maintaining that no increase or decrease will be made over what has already been on the basis of 1971 census population.
Now provision has been made for increasing the number of seats in the Legislative Assembly by the Reorganisation of J&K Act of 2019, Act No. 34 of 2019 that came into force on 09-08-2019.The sealing of 1971 population that was amended from 1971 to 2001 in 2002 has been renamed as Census-2011 in 2019 population figures for particularly settling the numbers for SC and ST seats out of 90 seats of the Legislative Assembly of UT of J&K and locating the reserved seats individually keeping in view the concentration of SC/ST population in the MLA constituencies to be delimited on the basis of geographical compactness (area wise ), physical features, existing boundaries of administrative units, facilities of communication and conveniences to the public.
Ofcourse the MP seats have not been touched for their number in Act No.34.So, the restrictions imposed in 1976 regarding delimitation have been constitutionally well addressed before taking up the present exercise.
(Daya Sagar is a Sr Journalist & a known analyst of J&K affairs dayasagr45@yahoo.com).