State BJP Spokesperson, Prof. Virender Gupta, in a statement said that matter with regard to delimitation of assembly constituencies needs to be expedited on the priority basis. He said that people of Jammu region have been deprived of their due representation in the state assembly as a result they are suffering the political deprivation. He added that the government of National Conference in 2002 perpetuated this discrimination on the people of Jammu region by taking the pretext of Parliament resolution. He stated that the delimitation of assembly constituencies is one of the issues of the Agenda of Alliance of PDP-BJP government and the report that government has initiated process to work out the modalities for setting up of delimitation commission is a step towards the fulfillment of the commitment of BJP to the people of the state.
Prof. Virender Gupta said that the exercise of delimitation should not be restricted merely to readjust boundaries of assembly constituencies and rotation of seven seats reserved for scheduled castes but it should also revoke the decision of freezing of the total seats of assembly. He further said that there should be increase in the total number of seats, may be upto 25 per cent and these should be reallocated between the three regions as per norms laid in J&K People Republic Act, according to which the allocation of the seats should depend upon the population, area and the nature of terrain. He asked for implying fairly the criterian in order to provide Jammu region its due representation in the state assembly, which would be more than Kashmir region.
