SRINAGAR, AUG 17: After a gap of seventeen years, panchayat elections will be held in Jammu and Kashmir this October, said Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah in the State Legislative Assembly here on Saturday.

The chief minister made this announcement when a disgruntled Shiv Charan Gupta of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wanted to know the exactly when the panchayat elections would be held. Meanwhile, official sources said the government had requisitioned the services of state's Chief Electoral Officer Jalil Ahmed Khan for conducting the elections to the panchayats and other civic bodies. It is not mandatory for the government to seek the electoral officer's help since the panchayat elections are conducted by the rural development department. However government sources said the officer's services were being sought for insuring fairness in the polls. Khan is credited with having conducted the assembly and Lok Sabha elections last year.

In all 1,496 panchayat bodies will be constituted after the elections. Of these Jammu region has 705 and Kashmir 719 while as the the Ladakh region his only 72 panchayats. In the last elections of 1980, the National Conference had controlled Kashmir valley's panchayats and the Congress had swept the polls in Jammu and Ladakh regions. The then Farooq Abdullah government had however revised the state Panchayat Act in 1989.

The new Act was framed on the pattern of the Karnataka model, studied by present revenue minister Rathor and cabinet member Shafi Mohomad Shafi Uri.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.