New Delhi

The Delimitation Commission of Jammu and Kashmir during its meeting on Monday proposed the allocation of Assembly seats in Kashmir and Jammu regions. 

Sources familiar with the developments said the panel proposed six additional seats for the Jammu region and one for the Kashmir Valley.

With this, the total Assembly seats in the Jammu region will rise to 43 and in the Kashmir region it will rise to 47.

The panel held its second meeting at Ashok Hotel in the national capital on Monday.

Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh, National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah along with party leaders Mohammad Akbar Lone and Hasnain Masudi and BJP's Jugal Kishore Sharma took part in the meeting.
The Delimitation Commission is headed by Justice (Retd.) Ranjana Prakash Desai.

Following the meeting, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said that National Conference (NC) leaders were satisfied with the parameters that are followed by the Commission.

"All the associate members committed themselves to cooperate with the functioning of the Commission. The Commission has done a tremendous job. We must appreciate they had followed certain laid down parameters on the basis of which they have come out with the documents which are very objectively done," Singh told reporters.

But former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister and Jammu Kashmir National Conference vice president, Omar Abdullah called the draft recommendation of the delimitation commission "unacceptable" and said that it promotes the "political agenda of BJP".

"The draft recommendation of the J-K delimitation commission is unacceptable. The distribution of newly created assembly constituencies with 6 going to Jammu and only 1 to Kashmir is not justified by the data of the 2011 census," he tweeted.

"It is deeply disappointing that the commission appears to have allowed the political agenda of the BJP to dictate its recommendations rather than the data which should have been its only consideration. Contrary to the promised "scientific approach" it's a political approach," he said in another tweet.