Jammu and Kashmir's first election after 370 canceled, 90% of voters lost their names

Srinagar, Ta. 4 October 2019, Friday

The first election, scheduled to be canceled by the central government after the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, is to be held by the Block Development Council in the third week of this month. According to the shocking data found at that time, in some constituencies 90% of the voters' names were missing from the voter list.

During the earlier elections of Gram Panchayats in Jammu and Kashmir, most of the political parties boycotted the election, so many seats in a number of Panchayats have been vacated. In these circumstances the question of how to conduct the BDC election by the sarpanchs is also questionable. For example, in the Kashmir Valley area, there are a total of 19578 seats of Sarpanch and Punch in ten districts. Out of them, 7029 seats are filled. The rest is empty. This means that 64% of the people who want to vote for the BDC are not present.

The worst case scenario is Pulwama and Shopian in the valley area. There are 1710 seats in Pulwama. Of these, only 132 seats are filled. That means 92.3 percent of the voters are not present here and only 82 seats out of 889 are filled in Shopian which means 90.8 percent of the voters are not present here. This is the case with Kulgam area. In these circumstances, even if the BDC elections were held, what was the meaning of the question here?

However, such situation was only in the valley area. Not so elsewhere. The number of absentee voters in Jammu and Ladakh is only 1.6 per cent and 2.8 per cent. That means the voters here are almost enough. The absence of leaders is also an important factor in the BDC elections being held in the state.

Some top leaders like Farrukh and Omar Abdullah of the National Conference and Mehbooba Mufti of the PDP are absent, which does not show the enthusiasm they see among party workers. Even though BJP leaders claim that there are no sanctions as before, the fact that the top leaders are still in police custody cannot be denied.