J&K announces 8-phase panchayat bypoll for over 12 K seats in March

Tribune News Service

Jammu, February 13

In a first major electoral exercise after the abrogation of Article 370, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Shailendra Kumar on Thursday announced eight-phase panchayat byelections to fill 12,650 seats in the union territory.

The elections will be held for 11,639 vacant seats for panchs and 1,011 for sarpanchs in 20 districts of the UT between March 5 and March 20.

Interestingly, panchayat elections will be held on a party basis this time. The elections in 2018 during Governor’s rule were conducted on a non-party basis. Due to non-participation of people in many parts of the state following terror threats, a large number of panchayats seats had remained vacant.

Addressing a press conference, CEO Shailendra Kumar said a majority of the seats for which elections will be held are in the Kashmir valley. There are 137 panchayat halqas (blocks) in Kashmir and election will be held in 128. Jammu has 148 blocks and election will be held in 146 halqas.

“After taking into consideration all relevant factors and inputs from various stakeholders, elections will be held between March 5 and March 20. The first notification will be issued on February 15,” announced the CEO.

The polls will be held on March 5, March 7, March 9, March 12, March 14, March 16, March 18 and March 20. The voting will be from 9 am to 1 pm. The counting of votes will be taken up on the same day and the results will be declared by the evening.

Kumar said elections would be confined to J&K UT as the Election Commission had not received any request from Ladakh. “Due to adverse weather conditions, it is not feasible to hold polls there at the moment. Whenever the administration forwards its request, the election commission will issue a separate notification for Ladakh”, said Kumar.

The last panchayat elections were held in November-December 2018 and 22,214 panchs and 3,459 sarpanch were elected. There are a total of 33,592 panch and 4,290 sarpanch seats in Jammu and Kashmir.

About the term of the elected representatives, the CEO said the candidates elected in the byelections would hold office for the remaining period of five years commencing from the date of the constitution of the panchayat halqa.