The response of new Union Home Minister Amit Shah to the crisis in Kashmir continuing unabated won’t by no means boil down the anger intensifying with every passing day in Kashmir as an absolutely provocative pronouncement on delimitation of assembly constituencies ahead of assembly elections would generate an atmosphere of regional and religious animosity in Kashmir. Needlessly triggering a row over the delimitation of assembly constituencies would further deepen the political chaos and crisis in Kashmir. Though political wisdom demands that contentious issues are left untouched till a popular government takes over the reign of power in the state but the new government at the centre tends to fiddle with the constitution for the purposes of regional and religious imbalances in the only muslim majority state of the country which interestingly has been at the core of difficulties in India-Pakistan relations for the last seventy years. Already at loggerheads with the two largest regional mainstream political parties National Conference (NC) and Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) over the row on article 370 and article 35-A ,the new Home Minister Amit Shah won’t find it easy to impose any major decision on delimitation of assembly constituencies over the people of Jammu & Kashmir against the whims and wishes of the majority of the population in a hostile political atmosphere. Even naives can understand the idea of delimitation of assembly constituencies on the basis of geographical area and not population is against all the standards of political understandabilities.
Delimitation of assembly constituencies on the basis of geographical area of the three regions of the state in Jammu & Kashmir would trigger a major row over the delimitation of assembly and parliamentary constituencies on the basis of geographical areas in other states of the country. Triggering a row over delimitation of assembly constituencies in Jammu & Kashmir is a good idea for furthering the prospects of the BJP’s electoral prospects in majority of the hindu dominated pockets of Jammu region but same could prove dangerous for the regional and religious harmony in Jammu and Ladhak regions of the state and demands for delimitation of assembly and parliamentary constituencies on the basis of geographical areas would arise from other states of the country as well.
