The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a petition challenging the Centre’s decision to form a delimitation commisison to redraw the map of the parliamentary and Assembly constituencies of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, reported Bar and Bench.

A bench comprising Justice SK Kaul and Justice AS Oka, however, clarified that the court is not passing any ruling on validity of the Jammu & Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, which has also been separately challenged.

The petition was filed by two Srinagar residents, Haji Abdul Gani Khan and Mohammad Ayub Mattoo, who had challenged the increase in the number of seats from 107 to 114, out of which 24 seats are in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, in the Union Territory.

The petition claimed that the order violates Articles 81 (composition of the Lok Sabha), 82 (readjustment after each census Upon the completion of each census), 170 (composition of Legislative Assemblies), 330 (reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha) and 332 (reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in state Assemblies) of the Constitution and provisions of Section 63 of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019.

The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act bifurcated the erstwhile state into two Union Territories – Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

The plea argued that the government had no power to form a delimitation commission under Section 3 of the Delimitation Act. It submitted that only the Election Commission could carry out the process of delimitation as it was notified under the Parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies Delimitation Order, 2008.

Senior advocate Ravi Shankar Jandhyala, representing the petitioners, contended that under Article 170(3) of the Constitution, the delimitation exercise was not to be carried out till 2026.

Justice Oka, however, orally observed that the petition had not challenged the constitutional validity of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta also contended that the objective of the Act was to deal with temporary exigencies and peculiar circumstances, Bar and Bench reported.

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Delimitation in Jammu and Kashmir

In February 2020, the Union government had started the delimitation process of Assembly constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir. On May 5, the number of Assembly seats was increased from 83 to 90 in the final delimitation order.

Of the seven new seats, one was given to Kashmir, taking its total to 46, and six were given to Jammu, which now has 43 seats.

While it is a routine effort in some parts of the country, the delimitation process is much more politically sensitive in Jammu and Kashmir because of fears that the Bharatiya Janata Party may use it to alter political outcomes in what was earlier India’s only Muslim-majority state.