| Gross injustice with Jammu | | Jammu and Ladakh have more voters, but Kashmir enjoys excessive representation in Lok Sabha, Legislative Assembly | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Apr 24: The people of Jammu province and Kashmir region voted on April 11, 18 and 23 to elect 5 members to the Lok Sabha. The constituencies included Jammu-Poonch and Kathua-Udhampur in Jammu province and Baramulla, Srinagar and Anantnag in Kashmir region.
What is the total number of voters in Jammu province and Kashmir region? Jammu has 37,33,078 voters and Kashmir 40,09,570 voters, which also include over 1,20 lakh Kashmiri Hindu voters, who have been living in Jammu, Udhampur, Delhi, Chandigarh, Pune etc since their migration in 1991. They hardly vote. In other words, the number of Kashmiri Muslim voters is 38, 89,570 and the actual difference in the number of voters between Jammu province and Kashmir region is 1,56,492. The number of voters in Ladakh, which elects one member to the Lok Sabha and will vote on May 6, is 1,74,967.
The number of voters in Jammu-Poonch and Kathua-Udhampur Lok Constituencies is 20,47,299 and 16,85,779, respectively. In Kashmir, Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency has 13,17,738 voters, Srinagar constituency 12,94,560 voters and Anantnag constituency 13,97,272 voters.
To be more precise, Jammu province would return to Lok Sabha 2 members at the rate of one per 18,66, 539 voters and 13,146 sq km land area on an average. As for Kashmir, it would elect 3 members to the Lok Sabha at the rate of one per 12,96,523 voters and 5,318 sq km land area on an average.
Similarly, Jammu province will elect 37 members to the legislative assembly at the rate of one per 1,00,894 voters and 711 sq km land area on an average. In contrast, Kashmir province will elect 46 members to the legislative assembly at the rate of one 84, 338 voters and 347 sq km land area on an average.
All this shows that Kashmir -- whose land area is almost two-time less than that of Jammu province and which has 1,56,492 more voters as compared with Jammu province but 18,470 voters less as compared to the total number of voters in Jammu and Ladakh (39,08,045) -- elects three members to the Lok Sabha, one more than Jammu, and 46 members to the legislative assembly, 9 more than Jammu.
All this suggests that Kashmir has excessive and unfairly preponderant share of representation both in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly since 1951 and the Lok Sabha since 1967. It would be only appropriate if the parliamentary and assembly constituencies in Jammu province are redrawn on the basis of the criteria laid down in the Representation of the Peoples Act. Jammu and Kashmir is under President's Rule and the Union Government is competent to administer justice to Jammu by conceding their 68-year-old genuine demand seeking proper representation in both Lok Sabha and Legislative Assembly. |
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