The meeting of the full commission and the secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, and other senior officials will be held days ahead of the poll panel’s visit to J&K on March 12-13.
The high-level meeting with the MHA has been scheduled to review the overall security requirements and paramilitary deployment options for the Lok Sabha and assembly. This meeting will be key to the phasing of polls by the EC.
The most decisive factor will be availability of adequate security forces for holding assembly polls alongside Lok Sabha — just as in 2019.
SECURITY CHECKS
Preliminary assessments show that holding assembly polls in J&K will necessitate heavier security arrangements vis a vis parliamentary polls alone.The reason: Election logistics apart, each contesting candidate is to be provided security cover and the number of contestants is higher in case of assembly polls.An average of 8-10 candidates are usually in the fray in each constituency pushing up security requirements considerably for the now 95 constituencies in the state. That alone will require nearly 150-200 companies of CAPF deployment.
Add to that the vulnerability of polling stations to violence or influence/intimidation.
In 2014, 42% of the polling stations were categorised as ‘critical’. In 2019, over 80% polling stations were termed hyper-sensitive.
In the first assembly election in J&K, after delimitation of constituencies, these numbers could change in more ways than one — pushing up requirements and calculations for forces considerably.
This may prove challenging given the overall deployment requirements for the Lok Sabha polls across states.
This was also the case in 2019 when it was assessed that holding assembly elections simultaneously in J&K with general elections would mean over 800 companies would need to be deployed in J&K alone — a prospect ruled out then by the MHA.
Even then, over 500 companies had to be posted to J&K for holding parliamentary polls. An EC panel had then recommended that assembly polls be held immediately after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
POLL CALENDAR
Accordingly, only if the MHA indicates at the March 8-9 meeting that it would be able to provide the required security deployment for a simultaneous Lok Sabha and assembly polls in J&K, can the latter be scheduled in April-May.
However, if the MHA indicates otherwise, the J&K assembly polls will have to be held separately, after parliamentary elections, those in the know indicated. This would either mean a summer assembly election in J&K or in September, after the Amarnath yatra. The EC will, accordingly, plan the J&K schedule following the MHA meet.
EC VISITS
While the Supreme Court has ordered that assembly polls must be completed by September 30 in J&K, there are several steps to it.
A start will be made with the visit by Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar and Election Commissioner Arun Goel to Jammu & Kashmir on March 12-13 — the first full Commission’s visit to the erstwhile state after 2019.
The poll panel top brass will meet representatives of political parties besides the district election officers and others to assess the state electoral machinery’s readiness levels for holding polls.
(You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel)
