SRINAGAR: Calling the Delimitation Commission’s proposal to allot six additional seats to Jammu and only one to Kashmir ‘divisive and unacceptable’, the People’s Alliance for the Gupkar Declaration on Tuesday said leaders of the six parties will hold a peaceful protest against these recommendations in Srinagar on January 1.
“The recommendations are unacceptable. Highly disappointing and divisive, it will further disempower the people of Kashmir. It is not in the interest of the people of J&K and not in national interest. It is bound to widen gaps between regions and communities,” Gupkar Alliance spokesman and CPI (M) leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami told reporters after a meeting of the alliance leaders in Jammu.
The meeting chaired by NC president Farooq Abdullah and also attended by PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti took place a day after the Delimitation Commission, during its meeting with five associate members of J&K, proposed 43 seats for Jammu and 47 for Kashmir in the 90-member J&K Assembly.
Tarigami said the constitutionality of the commission under the J&K Reorganisation Act had been challenged in the Supreme Court. “Population should have been the criteria of delimitation. But the census was ignored. We want that delimitation in J&K should happen when it is done in the whole country,” he said.