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The recent two-day visit by a team of the Election Commission of India (ECI), led by the Chief Election Commissioner, Rajiv Kumar, to Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) — its second since March to meet representatives of political parties and the local administration — comes amid the growing chorus from regional parties to hold elections to the 90-seat Assembly of the five-year-old Union Territory (UT). In its December 2023 judgment on Article 370, the Supreme Court was specific in its direction on holding elections in J&K. The Court had noted that “direct elections to legislative assemblies cannot be put on hold until Statehood is restored” and directed the ECI to conduct elections in J&K by September 30, 2024. The erstwhile State of J&K was bifurcated into two UTs, and its special status scrapped in 2019. J&K saw its last Assembly election in 2014. After the collapse of the coalition government of the Peoples’ Democratic Party-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2018, J&K has not had a representative government. The Centre should be buoyed by the faith shown by voters in the Lok Sabha elections held in April-May this year. Voters chose to depart from the previous trend, especially in the Kashmir Valley, of election boycotts, and instead posted a historic turnout of 58% in five Lok Sabha seats. Since 1990, J&K’s voting percentage had never crossed the 50% mark.
Therefore, holding Assembly elections will be a statement of confidence by the Centre. It will also be a positive reciprocation to voter enthusiasm. The Centre has been accused by several rights groups of curtailing democratic processes in J&K since its semi-autonomous status ended in 2019. Allowing people to choose their representatives will be a major step towards ensuring the restoration and the building up of political processes. Recurrent militant attacks in J&K point to the fact that a lot of work is still required to attain complete peace in J&K. However, making elections subservient to the security situation will only make the Centre hostage to the whims of terrorists. On the one hand, the Centre needs to further its efforts to deal with militancy, while on the other, kick off political processes. Assembly elections can turn out to be a democratic instrument to ensure that any sense of alienation does not get amplified and exploited by the enemies of the country. J&K needs to have a participatory democratic set-up in place to deal with issues such as growing unemployment, electricity crisis, and poor health infrastructure. These elections have the potential to act as a healing process for a place wounded by over three decades of conflict.
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Kashmir file: The Hindu Editorial on holding elections in Jammu and Kashmir
