SRINAGAR: On Friday, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar announced three-phase elections for J&K and said that it would be the shortest election in two decades, which will be concluded only in three phases for the union territory of J&K. Hours before the announcement of election schedule, there has been a massive administrative reshuffle in J&K, both in civil administration and police services.
DGP of J&K Police RR Swain has been removed as intelligence chief, instead being replaced by his Deputy Nitish Kumar. Union home ministry has sent Nalin Prabhat as special Director and will replace Swain on October 1, as police chief of J&K.
Massive reshuffle of district police chiefs and deputy commissioners has evoked a response from National Conference and Omar Abdullah as they have alleged that this reshuffle was aimed by LG administration to benefit BJP in the coming Assembly elections. They have appealed to the CEC to stop such transfers in Jammu and Kashmir for free and fair elections.
It is in place to mention that after the delimitation exercise, there are 90 Assembly seats in the UT of J&K with Kashmir valley having 47 and Jammu region having 43 seats.
People in J&K will vote on September 25, 18 and October 1, results of these elections will be announced on October 4.
Most of the parties including National Conference and PDP have welcomed the announcement of election dates in Jammu and Kashmir.
Omar Abdullah said, “Der aaye durust aaye”. The Election Commission has announced the dates of the elections in three phases. The schedule will be over in a short time. After 1987-1988, this is the first time when the elections in J&K are being conducted in such a small number of phases. The National Conference was ready for this day. We will begin our election campaign soon.”
“We are writing to the Election Commission of India that they should investigate the transfers that happened in J&K in the last 24 hours. Several officers were transferred suddenly, we doubt these transfers have been made to benefit the B and C teams of BJP by the LG which has been put here by BJP, in the last 1-2 years, the security of some leaders has been reduced and withdrawn. We request the ECI to give orders and ensure that their security is restored,” he added.
Congress has slammed centre for not announcing full statehood to Jammu and Kashmir before announcement of elections.
“Better late than never,” Pradesh Congress Committee senior vice-president Ravinder Sharma said reacting to the announcement by Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar.
Congress general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh said, “For the past five years, the Indian National Congress has been consistently demanding that full statehood should be restored to J&K and that Assembly elections should be conducted. J&K still awaits full statehood.”
He said that there were dim prospects for a pre-poll alliance with any political party in the Assembly elections.
Omar claimed that his party National Conference is ready to contest without any alliance in Jammu and Kashmir.
Though elections have been announced, there are serious security concerns in the hilly regions of Jammu and also in some hilly areas of Kashmir valley due to the recent spike in violence.
All the regional political parties demanded more security cover to their candidates due to the increasing graph of violence in Jammu and Kashmir.