Agencies:

Elections for 13,000 panchayat seats in J&K soon - first major polling exercise since the formation of UT

New Delhi
October 9, 2020

The first major democratic exercise in the newly created Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is likely to be conducted in October-November 2020 to fill over 13,000 vacant panchayat seats. Even though the main panchayat election in November-December 2018 had been held on a non-party basis, when J&K was a state, the by-election would be the UT�s first and on a party basis.

The Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj has announced on Wednesday, 7 October, that the Chief Electoral Officer who also is the administrative Secretary of the Department of Elections, would be soon issuing a formal notification and schedule for the by-election on 12,168 vacancies of Panches and 1,089 vacancies of Sarpanches across all 20 districts of the UT.

In 2011, Panchayat elections in J&K were held after a gap of nearly 30 years. Notwithstanding the four month long street turbulence through 2010, the Panchayat elections of 2011 broke many previous records of the voter turnout, in both Kashmir and Jammu divisions.

Mehbooba Mufti`s PDP-led coalition did not hold the next Panchayat elections on time in 2016. These were inordinately deferred in spite of repeated directions by the then Governor N.N. Vohra.
Finally, the same were held only in November-December 2018, five months after the fallout between the PDP and the BJP.