The Jammu & Kashmir Delimitation Commission has redrawn most of the Assembly seats in the state. The Delimitation Commission has changed the course of 90 seats and renamed around 28 seats. They have also deleted the 19 assembly seats. This has been proposed in their interim report. Other than Assembly constituency seats, they have also redrawn five Lok Sabha seats in the State. The report has said to be shared by associate members. This report also suggests that Kashmir will get an additional seat in the Kupwara district. The Jammu division is also going to have an additional seat in the Kathua district, one in Samba District, one in Kishtwar, one in Doda, one in Rajouri, and one in Udhampur.
Delimitation Commission has redrawn seven assembly seats
The Jammu and Kashmir Delimitation Commission has redrawn almost every assembly seat in the state and created seven new assembly seats. Delimitation Commission has also deleted 19 assembly seats. The seven new seats are created in Samba, Kathua, Kishtwar, Rajouri, Udhampur, Kupwara, and Doda districts. Each of these seven districts is going to have one additional seat. Out of these seven seats, four seats are from the Hindu majority reason in the Jammu-Samba-Kathua belt and the other three are Muslim-majority Chenab valley and Pir Panjal Valleys.
Apart from this seventeen constituencies have been redrawn in Jammu province and eleven assembly seats have been reconfigured in the Kashmir division. Nine assembly names have been deleted because of the reconfiguration in The Jammu Division and similarly, ten assembly seats have vanished in the Kashmir region. The Shri Mata Vaishno Devi assembly seats will be the smallest seats in reconfigured Jammu with around 73648 votes only.
The Delimitation Commission has also reframed the Lok Sabha Constituencies. The earlier structure used to have three seats from Kashmir and two seats from Jammu. Now Delimitation Commission has suggested to re-distribute all assembly seats in the Five Lok Sabha region. Baramulla seats will cover four districts i.e. Budgam, Bandipora, Baramulla, and Kupwara. The Jammu Lok Sabha seat will cover Jammu, Samba, and Reasi. The Udhampur seats will comprise five districts.
The seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes included Darhal, Thannamandi in Rajouri district; Surankote, Mendhar, and Poonch Haveli in Poonch district; and Mahore in Reasi district in the Jammu province’s Pir Panjal Valley. Lannoo in Anantnag, Kangan in Ganderbal, and Gurez are ST seats in the Kashmir province. The Commission has reserved nine seats for the STs and seven for the SCs.