NEW DELHI: The Central government is likely to introduce four significant bills, on day 2 of the Parliament’s winter session that began on Monday, regarding Jammu and Kashmir, particularly the one with the aim of reserving 33 percent segments (Approximately 30 seats) in the 90-member J&K Legislative Assembly for women.
Out of the five bills, four may be taken up for passage in the Lok Sabha, where they were introduced in July during the Monsoon session. However, one amendment bill, providing for extension of Women’s Reservation Law, has been listed for introduction, consideration and passage in the ensuing session. The reservation for women will come into force in 2029 when it is made applicable across the country.
All these five bills figured in the list of 19 Bills, circulated by the Union Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, which are likely to be taken up during the 14th session of current Lok Sabha and current session of Rajya Sabha under head “Legislative Business.”
The proposed amendment bill aims to reserve at least 30 seats in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly for women, effective from 2029, once the legislation comes into force across the country.
Within this 33 percent reservation for women, specific provisions will be for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) women. Seven seats are already reserved for SCs and nine for STs in the Assembly following the delimitation process undertaken in 2022. With the additional 33 percent reservation for women, nearly 50 percent of the seats in the UT Assembly will be notified as reserved under different categories.
The reservation for women might also be extended to the Lok Sabha, potentially reserving one or two of the five Lok Sabha seats for women in Jammu and Kashmir. The bill does not take into consideration about reservations for ST or women in Ladakh, where the local leaders have been demanding two separate Parliamentary seats for each district of Leh and Kargil.
Four other bills related to J&K, introduced in the Lok Sabha during the monsoon session in July but not pursued for passage, are likely to be presented for approval during the current winter session.
One of these bills, The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill, 2023, pertains to the nomination of two Kashmiri migrants, including one woman, and a refugee from Pakistan-Administered Kashmir (PAK) in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly by the Lieutenant Governor.
Another bill, The Constitution (Jammu and Kashmir) Scheduled Tribes Order (Amendment) Bill, 2023, focuses on granting Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the Pahari Ethnic Tribe, Paddari Tribe, Gadda Brahmans, and Kolis.
The third bill, The Constitution (Jammu and Kashmir) Scheduled Castes Order (Amendment) Bill, 2023 proposes changing the nomenclature of Other Social Castes (OSCs) to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) for the provision of reservation. Lastly, the fourth bill aims to include Valmikis in the list of Scheduled Castes.
After the Delimitation Commission Report which resulted in altering 78 percent of Jammu and Kashmir’s assembly constituencies, with apprehensions of reducing the representation for areas with Muslim majority and suiting the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), these fresh bills are likely to impact the voting patterns immensely.
Monsoon Session Amendment Bills
Among the bills introduced in the parliament on July 27, 2023, the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill, 2023 seeks to amend the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act 2019 and reserve two seats for Kashmiri migrants and one seat for displaced people from Pakistan Administered Kashmir (PAK) in the Union territory’s legislative assembly. These members will be nominated by the L-G, according to the provisions of the bill.
Introducing the bill, Union minister of state for home Nityanand Rai said that the bill provides for representation of Kashmiri migrants and displaced persons from PAK in the legislative assembly of Jammu and Kashmir “so as to preserve their political rights as well as their overall social and economic development”.
“The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill, 2023 provides for the following, namely: to insert new sections 15A and 15B in the Act so as to nominate not more than two members, one of whom shall be a woman, from the community of Kashmiri Migrants, and one member from Displaced Persons from Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir, to the Legislative Assembly of the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir; and amendments to sub-sections (3) and (10) of section 14 of the Act which are of consequential in view of completion of delimitation process in the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir,” according to the statement of objects and reasons.
Two other bills concerning the Jammu & Kashmir – Constitution (Jammu and Kashmir) Scheduled Castes Order (Amendment) Bill, 2023, and the Constitution (Jammu and Kashmir) Scheduled Tribes Order (Amendment) Bill, 2023 were also introduced by the Union government.
The Scheduled Castes Bill was aimed to include the Valmiki community in the list of Scheduled Castes of Jammu and Kashmir. The Scheduled Tribes Bill seeks to revise the list of Scheduled Tribes.
Delimitation Commission recommendations
The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill, 2023 was in line with the recommendations made by the J&K Delimitation Commission while releasing its final report in 2022. The recommendations, which were not part of the report were stated by the Delimitation Commission at a press conference.
These include two nominated seats for Kashmiri Pandits, with full voting rights, and an unspecified representation for the refugees and displaced population from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and West Pakistan.
The Commission has recommended reservation for at least two members of the Kashmiri Pandit community (one of them must be a female) with the power at par with that of “nominated members of the Legislative Assembly of Union Territory of Puducherry.”
In the case of the “Displaced Persons from Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir”, it has recommended that the central government might consider giving them “some representation in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly, by way of nomination” of their representatives.
A three-member J&K Delimitation Commission headed by former Supreme Court judge, Justice Anjana Prakash, was formed on March 6 2020 and assigned to redraw and increase assembly and parliamentary constituencies in J&K, in accordance with sections 59 and 60 of J&K Reorganisation Act 2019 and the Delimitation Act 2002.
The former J&K state assembly had 114 seats, of which 24 were reserved for Pakistan Administered Kashmir. The delimitation exercise, then, was limited to 70 Legislative Assembly constituencies.
Reservation to Scheduled Tribes
The J&K Delimitation Commission report reserved nine seats for scheduled tribes in accordance with the Delimitation (Amendment) Act, 2008, and the J&K Reorganisation Act. The scheduled-tribe population is spread across several districts of Jammu and Kashmir but five out of the nine seats were reserved in the twin border districts of Rajouri and Poonch.
Two out of five seats are in Rajouri and all three seats in Poonch were reserved for scheduled tribes, converting Poonch into an exclusive scheduled-tribe electoral area and leaving the non-scheduled-tribe population of Poonch district unrepresented. If a constituency is reserved for scheduled castes or scheduled tribes, the entire electorate can vote, but someone from the reserved category can contest the election.
Rajouri and Poonch are border districts with complex demographic dynamics. In both Rajouri and Poonch, 36% of the population is from traditionally pastoral Muslim tribes called the Gujjars and Bakerwals, who speak Gojri and have a distinct culture.
They fall in the scheduled tribe category. The rest of the population, both Muslim and Hindu, speak Pahari, a dialect of Punjabi. In Poonch district, 10% of the population is Hindu and Sikh, mostly concentrated in the town of Poonch and others like it, whereas the rural areas are populated by Muslims, primarily scheduled tribes and Paharis.
Electoral politics and the political narrative in Rajouri and Poonch has traditionally been determined by both the Gujjar-Pahari divide and the Hindu-Muslim divide.
With a bill proposed to include the Paharis and other ethnic communities into the fold of the reserved schedule tribes, the Gujjar-Bakerwal community that had rejoiced the recommendations of the reserved ST seats are now apprehensive of losing electoral heft in the elections.
They fear that if the Paharis are accorded tribal status, this will not only make the reserved seats in Rajouri-Poonch districts irrelevant, but it would also alter the region’s political dynamics and create further complexities. The Jammu & Kashmir Reservation (Amendment) Act 2014 defines Paharis not in terms of location but linguistic identity: Paharis also include about half a million Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), who settled mostly in Jammu district since 1947. There is still not much clarity on what the new amendment bill entails.
With apprehensions in the minds of Gujjars-Bakerwals, who fear that they will have to share their reservation benefits in the admissions, jobs and now in the political sphere as well with the new beneficiaries. This concern is still lurking in the minds of community members, notwithstanding the commitment, by central leaders that there would be no dilution in their (Gujjar-Bakerwal) existing 10 percent reservation.
Despite these assurances even by the L-G Manoj Sinha, the community has held a Mahapanchayat on December 3, 2023, in Jammu, wherein they announced that their community will not accept any dilution in their share of reservations.
Opposition to Delimitation Commission recommendations
The Delimitation Commission report had raised several anxieties within Jammu and Kashmir for a range of reasons.
It recommended a massive redistribution of boundaries while adding seven new constituencies – six in Jammu province and one in Kashmir province.
Barring Bhartiya Janata Party, all major political parties had criticized the Delimitation Commission as a “flawed exercise”. They said that the cardinal principle of population in conducting delimitation, or redrawing electoral boundaries, and does not explain how it has applied the laws and guidelines governing delimitation.
The National Conference and the Peoples’ Democratic Party had said that while recommending six additional seats for Jammu province and one for Kashmir, the Commission had overlooked the core criteria of population and given precedence to secondary considerations.
According to the 2011 census, the population of Hindu-majority Jammu province is 53.72 lakh and Muslim-majority Kashmir is 68.83 lakh. With forty-three seats now for Jammu and forty-seven for Kashmir, the average voter size per constituency in Jammu would be 1.24 lakh, and it would be 1.46 lakh in Kashmir.
All opposition political parties called the Delimitation Commission recommendations as “a complete wear and tear” of the electoral map and constituencies without taking into consideration the ground position. They were almost unanimous in saying that this was a pattern to suit the interests of the BJP.
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