Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir): Jammu and Kashmir has been under the President's rule since 2018 with Assembly elections still looking like a distant dream so much so that former Chief Minister and National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah has told his party workers not to "waste petrol on campaigns in the absence of assembly elections.
During a recent press conference, Chief Election Commissioner Rajeev Kumar said that assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir will be held at the "right time keeping in view the security situation". It has been a go-to statement for the Election Commission and the BJP leaders in recent years.
Amid this, the Chief Electoral Officer of Jammu and Kashmir Pandurang K Pole has invited bids for printing the electoral rolls for the Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections. In this bid notification, applicants are instructed to submit their applications through Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal within 180 days.
"Printing of Photo Electoral Rolls for All Assembly Constituencies of Jammu & Kashmir UT. The Tentative number of sets of Electoral Rolls to be printed for all Assembly Constituencies in the form of the Draft and Final Publication of Electoral Rolls will be 773160," reads the notification.
It says that the work has to be completed within a short period of time, so the applicant must have a 'large infrastructure for printing'. After the application and the sample PDF is approved, the applicant must submit all the printed Photo Electoral Rolls within ten days. And if elections are announced during this time, they must be submitted within seven days.
When ETV Bharat spoke to Pole on the phone over the development, he called the notification "a routine thing" and said the Chief Election Commissioner will take the final decision regarding the assembly elections. A senior officer of the Jammu and Kashmir administration told ETV Bharat that while it was not in their hands to hold elections, the situation in Jammu and Kashmir had improved a lot.
"In the last week of this month, a high-level meeting is scheduled to be held under the chairmanship of Home Minister Amit Shah regarding the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. During this meeting, many important issues will be discussed. We are hopeful that after this meeting, the Election Commission might take a call regarding the Assembly elections," the official added.
Also read: 'Don't see elections happening in J&K; we are not begging either': Omar Abdullah
