The Election Commission of India (ECI) has stuck to the delimitation draft for Assam barring the renaming of a Parliament and 19 Assembly constituencies in its final order published on August 11.
The draft proposal was brought out in June.
While the ruling BJP has welcomed the order, the Opposition Congress and the All India United Democratic Front have criticised it.
Altogether 19 Assembly — up from 16 earlier — and two Parliament constituencies have been reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST). Similarly, the number of Assembly seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC) seats has increased from eight to nine while the SC tag has been removed from the Karimganj Lok Sabha seat and given to the adjoining Silchar.
The name of the Darrang Lok Sabha seat, which used to be Mangaldoi, has been revised to Darrang-Udalguri.
The Assembly constituencies whose nomenclatures have been revised are Mankachar (now Birsing Jarua), South Salmara (Mankachar), Manikpur (Srijangram), Bhowanipur (Bhowanipur-Sorbhog), Rupshi (Pakabetbari), Boko (Boko-Chaygaon), Hajo (Hajo-Sualkuchi), Gobardhana (Manas), Batadraba (Dhing), Nagaon (Nagaon-Batadraba), Sootea (Nadaur), Chabua (Chabua-Lahowal), Moran (Khowang), Dima Hasao (Haflong), Algapur (Algapur-Katlicherra), Badarpur (Karimganj North), North Karimganj (Karimganj South), South Karimganj (Patharkandi), and Ratabari (Ram Krishna Nagar).
The Manas Assembly seat is named after Manas National Park and Tiger Reserve. The Kaliabor Lok Sabha seat, currently represented by Gaurav Gogoi of Congress, had been renamed as Kaziranga.
The ECI said the reservation of constituencies for SC and ST communities was done on the basis of the provisions laid down in Articles 330 and 332 of the Constitution.
An ECI team comprising Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar and Election Commissioners Anup Chandra Pandey and Arun Goel, held public hearings in Guwahati in July to provide an opportunity to the people, public representatives, political leaders, and other stakeholders to express their views.
The public hearings were part of the consultative exercise by the Commission during the process of delimitation. The Commission heard over 1,200 representations from 31 districts and held meetings with over 20 political parties.
“Around 45% of the total of 1,222 suggestions/objections received in the Commission have been addressed in the final proposal. In around 5% of the representations, the demands raised were found beyond the constitutional and statutory provisions and hence could not be acceded to. The requests made in all the remaining suggestions/objections were not found feasible to accommodate,” the statement said.
