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Non-locals, security personnel being registered as voters in Kashmir: Mehbooba Mufti

Former Chief Minister and Peoples Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday claimed that non-local labourers and security forces personnel were being enlisted as voters in north Kashmir’s Baramulla.

“According to reports, verbal orders were passed at an administrative meeting in Baramulla yesterday by district Tehsildar to enrol non-local labourers, CISF, CRPF, BSF & army personnel as voters,” Mufti said, in a tweet.
PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti. File

She asked the administration to “come clean on this.” Mufti’s statement comes a day after her party took objection to registration of outsiders as voters during the all party meeting convened by the Chief Electoral Officer in Jammu on Monday.

“The ruling government at the Centre has started the process of taking away the peoples’ rights and diluting public will here on August 5, 2019 and now they have added a new chapter to it by saying they will add non-local voters. They are trying hard to change the identity, democratic rights, and electoral demography of the people of Jammu & Kashmir, but it is not acceptable to the people of Jammu & Kashmir under any circumstances,” the PDP said in the meeting.

The PDP had demanded that the registration camps for new voters should be organised in far off and inaccessible areas so that none are left behind in participating in the democratic process.

Meanwhile, CEO Hirdesh Kumar, referring to his earlier statement on inclusion of fresh voters in J&K, said, “The figure of 25 lakh additions doesn’t have any sanctity and actual number of voters added would be determined only after revision of electoral rolls.”

He said only those who are eligible as per the Representation of the Peoples Act-1951 would be registered as voters. The BJP and Ikk Jutt Jammu have not objected to the move to allow outsiders to enlist as voters during the meeting.

Earlier, only State Subjects, those who have been living in J&K since 1929, were allowed to register as voters. However, after the Centre ended J&K’s special constitutional position in 2019, outsiders can now register as voters in the Union Territory.