Election process in motion

14/08/2018

After getting formal letters from the State Government for conduct of Municipal and Panchayat elections, the State Election Commission (SEC), responsible for holding polls in the absence of the State Election Commission, has set the process in motion for Municipal elections first followed by Panchayats and the revision of electoral rolls would be undertaken from the first week of August. Housing and Urban Development Department and Rural Development Department have formally written separate letters to the State Election Commission for holding elections to Urban Local Bodies and Panchayats respectively in Jammu and Kashmir, which have been pending since long. The State Election Commission has to revise electoral rolls for conducting the elections to include all those youth as voters, who have attained the age of 18 since the last revision was conducted. The revision was likely to start in the first week of August and would take a month time and some more time would be required for adjusting the Wards of 78 Urban Local Bodies in the State including two Corporations, six Councils and 76 Committees. Jammu and Srinagar, the twin rotational capital cities of the State have Corporations while Udhampur, Poonch, Kathua, Baramulla, Sopore and Anantnag have Councils. Rest of the towns have Committees.
Publication of final electoral rolls would take at least one month and only then a notification for conduct of the elections can be issued provided that all other formalities like reservation of Wards etc are complete. And if everything goes well, the Municipal elections can be conducted in the month of October. Government would test the waters by holding Municipal elections as the Municipalities are confined to cities and towns and if everything goes well, it would go ahead with Panchayat elections in November-December.
The SAC had recently carried out an amendment in the Panchayati Raj Act rescinding the decision of previous PDP-BJP Government to facilitate election of Sarpanch by the Panchs of the Panchayat. It had revived the previous practice of direct elections of Sarpanchs. There were 4490 Panchayats in Jammu and Kashmir presently as compared to 4130 in 2011, when last elections to Panchayats were held. The elected Panchayats had completed their term in June 2016. Presently, there were no elected Panchayats. The Municipal elections were last held in January-February 2005 and the elected Municipalities had completed their term in March 2010. For the past eight years, there were no elected Municipalities in the State.

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