Pakistan rejects Jammu & Kashmir Delimitation Commission report

The Delimitation Commission has been tasked by the Indian government to redraw the boundaries of assembly and parliamentary constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry has summoned India's Charge d’Affaires and handed a demarche conveying Islamabad's categorical rejection of the Delimitation Commission report.

The Delimitation Commission has been tasked by the Indian government to redraw the boundaries of assembly and parliamentary constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir.

The three-member panel, headed by Justice (retd) Ranjana Desai, on Thursday signed the final order on redrawing the assembly constituencies of the Union Territory.

The Delimitation Commission on Jammu and Kashmir, formed in March 2020, on Thursday notified its final report giving six additional assembly seats to Jammu region and one to Kashmir Valley. Jammu division will now have 43 assembly seats and Kashmir 47 in the 90-member House.

On Thursday, Pakistan’s Foreign Office, which summoned India's Charge d’Affaires to the ministry, told the Indian diplomat that the Delimitation Commission was aimed at "disenfranchising and disempowering" the Muslim majority population of Jammu and Kashmir.

Pakistan categorically rejects the report of the so-called ‘Delimitation Commission’ for Jammu and Kashmir, the Foreign Office said in a statement.

The Indian side was conveyed that the entire exercise was farcical and had already been rejected by the cross-section of political parties in Jammu and Kashmir because through this effort, India only wanted to lend ‘legitimacy’ to its illegal actions of August 5, 2019, the statement said.