The J&K Delimitation Commission has changed the complexion of most of the 90 Assembly seats, whilereconfiguring and renaming 28 new Assembly constituencies and deleting 19 Assembly segments in its interim report. Besides, it has proposed to redraw all the five Lok Sabha seats.
The interim report, shared with the associate members two days ago, suggested that the Kashmir division will get an additional seat in Kupwara, while the Jammu division will have one additional seat in Kathua district, one in Samba, one in Doda, one in Rajouri, one in Udhampur and one in Kishtwar.
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Of the six seats, three Assembly segments are from the Muslim-majority Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal valleys, while four are in the Hindu Jammu-Samba-Kathua belt.
Seventeen constituencies have been redrawn in the Jammu province while 11 have been reconfigured in the Kashmir division. Similarly, nine names of Assembly constituencies in the Jammu division have vanished due to the reconfiguration and 10 names disappear from the Kashmir division.
The Shri Mata Vaishno Devi constituency has been identified as thesmallest of all with just 73,648 votes in the Jammu region.
The Commission has also proposed reframing of Lok Sabha constituencies, with J&K earlier having five which included three seats from Kashmir and two from Jammu. It has suggested to distribute18 Assembly segments among the five Lok Sabha constituencies.
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The Commission has advocated a Lok Sabha seat, disjointed geographically, by merging three districts (Kulgam, Anantnag, Shopian) of south Kashmir in the Valley and two districts of Rajouri and Poonch in the Pir Panjal valley in the Jammu province. It will be named Anantnag-Rajouri seat, which will comprise a significant population of non-Kashmiri speaking Schedule Tribe Assembly segments. The newly carved Lok Sabha seat will havesix of the nine Assembly segments reserved for the STs.
The Srinagar Lok Sabha seat will now comprise Assembly segments spread over five districts of Srinagar, Budgam, Pulwama, Ganderbal and Shopian against the earlier three.
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North Kashmir’s Baramulla Lok Sabha seat will be spread over four districts, which includes parts of Budgam, Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipora.
The Jammu Lok Sabha seat will now comprise districts of Jammu, Samba and Reasi.The Udhampur Lok Sabha constituency is spread over five districts against six in the past.
The seats reserved for the Schedule Tribes included Darhal, Thannamandi in Rajouri district; Surankote, Mendhar and Poonch Haveli in Poonch district; and Mahore in Reasi district in the Jammu province’s Pir Panjal Valley. Larnoo in Anantnag, Kangan in Ganderbal, and Gurez are ST seats in the Kashmir province. The Commission has reserved nine seats for the STs and seven for the SCs.
