Guwahati, July 12: Congress Lok Sabha MP Abdul Khaleque on Tuesday said that the draft proposal for delimitation in Assam must be scrapped. He said that the draft proposal for delimitation has been done in a ‘haste and with an ulterior motive to marginalise certain sections of the society’.
Khaleque, in a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner Rajib Kumar requested for the scrapping of the draft delimitation proposal to safeguard the democratic values as the manner in which both the Lok Sabha and assembly constituencies “have been redrawn defies all logic.”
My letter to Chief Election Commissioner of India demanding scrapping of Delimitation Draft of Constituencies of Assam to safeguard the democratic values . @ECISVEEP pic.twitter.com/0ZlO2swVFy
— Abdul Khaleque (@MPAbdulKhaleque) July 11, 2023
The Barpeta MP said, according to the Election Commission of India (ECI), protecting the rights of indigenous people were taken into consideration while going for delimitation but there is no clarification of the term ‘indigenous’ in the constitution and with no explanation of the same by the government, the use of the term indicates a vague statement.
He further said that the interests of communities have no place while redrawing of constituencies in a democratic set-up but it is more about managing the geographic intricacies.
‘The ECI, however, has towed the government line of looking into the interest of its preferred community, thereby making the process somewhat undemocratic and diluted with political intent. This should not have been the core area of concern for delimitation’, he added.
He also alleged that there has been a loss of assembly constituencies in the Barpeta and Dhubri parliamentary seats along with in some districts of the Barak Valley and as such the entire exercise has been done in a manner to “marginalise certain sections of the society”.
‘There are many anomalies in the process of preparing the draft of delimitation and it is quite evident that democratic values have been consigned to flames while upholding political interests. Therefore, we request that the draft delimitation proposal be scrapped to safeguard democratic values’, Khaleque added.
On June 20, the ECI had notified the draft delimitation proposal by retaining the number of assembly seats in Assam at 126 and the Lok Sabha constituencies at 14.
Also, the state has seven Rajya Sabha seats.
According to the new draft, the assembly seats reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) would be increased to nine from eight and for Scheduled Tribes (ST) to 19 from 16 while for the Lok Sabha constituencies, two have been proposed under the ST category and one for the SC community.
The commission has also proposed to alter the geographical boundaries of most of the assembly and the Lok Sabha constituencies.
The BJP has received backlash and criticised since the draft delimitation proposal was notified.
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