Centre Moves To Nominate Five Members To The Elected J&K Assembly

By Sant Kumar Sharma

JAMMU: In something that is happening for the first time in its electoral history, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha will soon nominate five members to the Legislative Assembly of Jammu & Kashmir. These nominated MLAs will have voting rights and can play an equal role as their elected counterparts in the formation of the government. The elections for 90 assembly seats were held in three phases and the results will be declared on October 8. Mr Sinha is likely to make the nominations immediately after the results are declared on the recommendations of the Union Home Ministry.

This effectively means that the Legislative Assembly will have 95 members and 48 (not 46) will constitute an absolute majority. Till 2014, J&K had 87 elected members in the Legislative Assembly and two nominated women members. These two women members were nominated by the government that came to power after the elections. Incidentally, these nominated MLAs did not have all the legislative powers vested in the elected members.

The five nominated MLAs will be chosen from among the Kashmiri displaced people and those who had come here from Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK) in 1947. They too will hold full legislative powers and privileges, just like the other 90 elected representatives in the House.

According to official sources, two of the nominated MLAs will be Kashmiri displaced members, one man and one woman. One nominated MLA will be chosen from among the POJK displaced community. This will be a significant milestone in terms of representation for these communities, as inclusion in the legislative assembly has been a long standing demand.

LG Manoj Sinha will make these nominations based on the advice received from the Union Home Ministry led by senior BJP leader Amit Shah. The process for the nomination has been laid in an amendment to the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act, 2019. The Act had led to reorganisation of earlier state into two Union Territories (UTs) of J&K and UT of Ladakh. The Act was further revised in July 2023 to introduce these nominations of five MLAs.

This nomination process is something akin to what prevails in the UT of Puducherry which has four nominated legislators. Incidentally, it needs to be mentioned here that the state of J&K had a bicameral legislature. However, after making J&K a UT, the Legislative Council (LC) was abolished.

Due to the nominations by LG on the recommendations of the Union Home Ministry, it is clear that these legislators will owe allegiance to the BJP. As such, even before the assembly election results have been declared, the BJP can be said to have an advantage of five MLAs in the 95-member House.

Meanwhile, NC leader Rattan Lal Gupta has termed these nominations as unethical saying this is something unconstitutional as well. Mr Gupta, who is provincial president of the NC in the Jammu region, has voiced his objections to the whole nomination process.

Declaring the nominations by LG as undemocratic, Mr Gupta said it should be the prerogative of the elected government, as in the past, to nominate these five MLAs. He argued that all legislative powers should shift to an elected government in a normal democratic set-up and these powers should not be exercised by the LG.

Interestingly, party patriarch Farooq Abdullah, who is also its president, has not spoken anything about the nomination process. His son Omar Abdullah, vice president of the party, has also not said anything on this issue so far.

This is being interpreted by some political analysts as efforts by the NC not to say or do anything to burn its bridges with the BJP which rules at the Centre.

Meanwhile, the NC has refuted reports that it was involved in any back channel talks with parties outside the India bloc for the formation of the next government. On its social media handle, the party has categorically denied insinuations of engaging in any such talks, labelling them as “baseless rumours’’.

“We urge the public, who have placed their trust in us, to disregard these false claims and not be swayed by rumour-mongering,’’ the party has said.

In a related development anticipating the constitution of a legislative assembly soon, all employees of the J&K Legislative Assembly have been asked to report back to their parent department. An order to this effect for immediate redeployment of these employees have been issued by the General Administration Department (GAD) of the Union Territory (UT) of J&K.

The GAD order mandates that all such employees must report directly to the office of the Secretary, J&K Legislative Assembly, in either Jammu or Srinagar. (IPA Service)