Have to fill time-consuming Form-M to prove they are migrants
As Anantnag braces for the bypoll on June 22, displaced Kashmiri Hindus belonging to the constituency living in Jammu have to go through a complex process to prove they are migrants to cast their vote at a special polling booth being established for them.
Community members claim that filling the Form-M introduced by the Election Commission after the exodus of 3.50 lakh Pandits in 1989-90 has always restricted their participation in the democratic process.
There have been allegations that migrant voters refrain from registering themselves due to the cumbersome process which the community has to go through every time whenever elections are conducted, be it for the Lok Sabha or the Legislative Assembly.
Under the Jammu and Kashmir Representation of the People Act, 1957, there is a special provision in Section 36-A which says that people can vote in polling stations outside the territorial limits of their constituency. After the migration of the Pandits, the election authorities have been setting up special polling booths in Jammu and other places to allow them to vote.
“We have always demanded that M-Form should be filled on a one-time basis which could encourage us to take part in the democratic process. In Anantnag, there are nearly 14,000 Kashmiri Pandit voters but only 4,000 were registered during the last Assembly elections. Similar is the situation in other constituencies,” said Sanjay Bhat, a migrant voter from Anantnag at present living in Muthi.
Community members say that it takes at least four days to complete the entire process and several visits to Relief Organisation Office to get the form verified. Then the list is forwarded to the returning officer in respective constituencies and even this does not ensure that names will figure in the voter list, they say. Despite most of minority community members living in Jammu, New Delhi and Udhampur, they are still registered as voters in respective constituencies in the Valley.
“The voter lists of migrants have not been properly updated over the years by the authorities and names of many bona fide voters have been deleted from the list. We have been demanding the community should not be subjected to scrutiny every time,” said RL Bhat, a prominent writer and social activist.
Representative organisations have been claiming that their votes across the Valley could exceed 1.50 lakh but the mechanism introduced by the Election Commission and the hurdles in processing M-Form had forced many Pandits not to participate in the election process.
However, Assistant Returning Officer Sachin Dev Singh said that M-Form had been introduced to ensure that there was no bogus voting. “Pandits are still listed in their respective constituencies in the Valley and the M-form is necessary. If they face any problem, it should be brought to our notice,” he said.
Across the Kashmir valley, the number of voters from the community has dropped considerably on the voter list of the state. During the 1996 parliamentary elections, there were 1.47 lakh voters. Their count dipped to 1.17 lakh in 2002. In the 2009 Assembly polls, their number went further down to 71,000, and in 2014 to 92,000.
