Jahangeer Ganaie
Srinagar, Dec 16: Three District Development Council (DDC) seats in Jammu and Kashmir remain vacant after their members were elected as Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs).
As per the details available, the three DDC members who were elected as MLAs include Waheed Ur Rehman Para, who was elected as the DDC member from Pulwama-I but was not allowed to take oath as a DDC member; Irfan Hafiz Lone, who was elected as the DDC member from Sangrama; and Mehraj Malik, who was elected as the DDC member from Kahara.
Waheed Ur Rehman Para won the assembly elections from Pulwama, Lone won from the Wagoora-Kreeri constituency, and Mehraj Malik won from the Doda assembly segment.
It has been around two months since the assembly election results were announced, but the authorities have yet to declare by-polls for these three seats.
The DDC elections were introduced as part of the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayati Raj Act, 1989, which was amended by the Government of India to establish a three-tier governance system in the Union Territory (UT).
The first-ever DDC elections in J&K were held in November-December 2020 in eight phases. These elections were historic as they marked the first significant electoral exercise in the UT after the reorganization of J&K into two separate UTs—J&K and Ladakh—in August 2019.
The DDCs replaced the District Development Boards, empowering elected representatives to formulate and execute development plans for their respective districts. The councils consist of 14 members per district, directly elected by the public, and are responsible for overseeing the execution of developmental projects and schemes.
A by-election for two DDC seats was held in 2023 after it was revealed that two previously elected candidates were not Indian citizens. The polls for two District Development Council (DDC) seats were declared “null and void” after it emerged that two women from Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK), married to locals from the valley, had contested the elections.
The State Election Commission (SEC), in the exercise of the powers conferred under Section 36 of the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayati Raj Act, 1989, had declared the polling for the DDC constituencies of Drugmulla and Hajin (A) as void, cancelling the candidature of Soomia Sadaf and Shazia Aslam. (KNO)
