Concerns in Kashmir as Indian party seeks re-election map | Election Issues

Srinagar, Kashmir operated by India – The controversial proposals to replicate Kashmir’s Indian-led election map have sparked concern and anger among local Muslims, who say the aim is “to disqualify them”.

In March last year, a border committee headed by a former judge of the Supreme Court of India was appointed by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and tasked with redesigning the constituencies that send delegates to the district convention.

On December 20, the group told five of its members – three from the National Conference and two from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – that they wanted to add six seats in Jammu province and just one seat in Kashmir province.

India’s Kashmir-led government summit was canceled in August 2018, a year before New Delhi. he broke the law which granted independence to the disputed territory and divided it into two state-controlled territories – Jammu-Kashmir and Ladakh.

What is border crossing?

Demarcation means re-drawing the boundaries of a meeting or constituency to accommodate a change in the population of a community.

In the politics of the old convention, the constituency had 46 seats and 37 Jammu.

In India, constituencies based on the size of a population make up an important part of the electoral process to form a federal government.

According to the 2011 census, India-controlled Kashmir has a population of 12.5 million, while Muslims are the majority with 68.31 percent and Hindus 28.43 percent. Most Hindus live in the Jammu region.

Although Indian law makes populations the basis for reforming political borders – a globally accepted standard – the demarcation committee has made “space and availability” a necessary basis for election maps in the Himalayan region.

According to a calculation of the group’s views in their December 20 speech, one conference seat in Kashmir Valley will seat about 146,000 people. However, the district in Jammu can be filmed from an area with a population of about 125,000.

Experts say the redistribution of conference seats has been “severely disrupted” in favor of Jammu and could turn Muslims into a small political party in India with a predominantly Muslim population.

In the last Kashmir by-election held in India, held in 2014, the Hindu nationalist BJP won 25 of the 37 seats in Jammu constituency and there is no valley.

For the past 70 years, all the prime ministers in Kashmir, India-led, have become Muslims.

However, having a Hindu prime minister has been a long-held promise of BJP to his followers in the predominantly Muslim region.

‘Divided and weak’

The committee’s views have sparked outrage and tensions between Muslim politicians and freedom fighters in India-controlled Kashmir, who fear “mass eviction and plunder”.

The idea is said to be “influenced by the ideology” of the BJP, which has actively pursued border control in the region, even though it is cold all over India until 2026.

After India he lost a special role of Kashmir, which is overseen by India in 2019, enacted the Jammu Act and the Kashmir Reorganization Act to change constituencies from 83 seats to 90.

In response to the panel, three members of the National Conference rejected their views when the BJP welcomed them.

“Leading to the establishment of borders and population,” Hasnain Masoodi, an Indian-led southern Kashmir consultant and member of the commission, told Al Jazeera.

“It means you are a representative of several people. If the right procedures are followed, the sentences will be different and Kashmir will have more seats. But here, whether it be land laws or employment, all these measures are aimed at devolving power and taking away the rights of the Kashmiri people. “

In many Muslim communities in Jammu, locals fear that the move will make it unnecessary for them to divide Muslim-dominated territories in order to establish Hindu status.

“This will not help Muslims in Jammu. This will leave us without leaders and permanent rulers,” Syed Asim Hashmi, a lawyer and politician in Jammu district in Doda state, told Al Jazeera.

‘Political deprivation’

On January 1, the People’s Alliance of Gupkar DeclarationPAGD), an umbrella group of well-known Indian parties formed in 2019, organized a protest against the group’s activities in the capital city, Srinagar.

But many of its leaders, including the three Indian prime ministers led by Kashmir, were arrested by government officials on the day of the protest.

Mehbooba Mufti, the region’s last prime minister in terms of leadership in the BJP, told Al Jazeera he “wants to disrupt the masses” here.

“Many Muslim groups are divided and powerless. It is part of the same process. They have taken away our power in the fight against our identity, our place, our jobs. We are currently facing a political crisis,” he said.

Ashok Koul, the BJP’s secretary general in the region, dispelled the fears and said the distribution exercise “does not involve any religion”.

“The committee has scientifically designed chairs. Population is not the only option but there are other factors such as availability,” Kaul told Al Jazeera.

“Jammu is happy because this is fair to them on the basis of availability and communication,” he said, adding that the idea is a mere figment of the imagination right now. “Let’s see what happens.”

But Kashmiri experts say it would be “impossible” for the federal government to abandon the commission’s demands.

Political analyst Sheikh Showkat Hussain said the idea “is in line with what Muslims should be eliminated in India”.

“Everywhere you look today, the tide of protectionist sentiment is flowing. This is why Uttar Pradesh (the BJP-led northern state) has the largest seats. But in Kashmir, they go the other way, “Hussain said.

“It is therefore a natural and natural phenomenon that there is anxiety and fear because it is the only place where Muslims can be in control, even because the area still has a heavy hand,” he said, referring to the large presence of war in India. region.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir is embroiled in a series of decades of hostilities between India and Pakistan, which claim the entire region but control its territories.

Tensions between the two nuclear powers have grown since 2019 when the region was stripped of its independence and divided into two state-controlled states.