New Delhi: Elections to the urban local bodies in Jammu and Kashmir will be delayed considerably, according to the statement of lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha. The LG said that they will be held only after the completion of delimitation as well as the process to reserve seats for Other Backward Classes (OBCs).Sinha’s statement on Tuesday, November 14, was preceded by intense speculation over a possible delay in holding elections.The tenure of Srinagar Municipal Corporation ended on November 5 while the Jammu civic body completed its five-year tenure on Tuesday, November 14. Other municipal bodies across the Union territory will finish their tenure by the end of this month. The last ULB and panchayat elections in the UT were held between October and December 2018 – which too were after a long delay.The LG made the official disclosure on Tuesday during an event organised to felicitate the municipal councillors who had completed their five-year tenure recently. “The elections for urban local bodies would be held after completion of the delimitation exercise of wards and reservation of wards for Other Backward Classes,” said Sinha, according to the Indian Express.The latest delay would mean further depriving J&K people of their democratic rights, as even assembly polls have not been held in the Union territory since 2014. The Union government and local administration are yet to initiate the process to hold assembly polls despite the fact that the delimitation process of assembly segments had concluded sometime back.Since the dissolution of the erstwhile state legislature in 2018, J&K has been under the President’s Rule, prompting local political parties to demand the Union government to resume electoral activities in the Union territory.A senior told IE that authorities are “obliged to prepare a list of socially and educationally backward classes (SEBCs), which can be acted upon for providing reservation to OBCs, including in election to local governments”. The changes are necessary given that the Special Status that J&K had enjoyed until then was done away with in August 2019.As per the Supreme Court orders, the following three conditions need to be taken into account while drawing up a reservation plan: a dedicated commission to collect empirical data on the OBC population, specifying the proportion of reservation, and ensuring that the cumulative share of reserved seats does not breach 50% of the total seats.Although the G.D. Sharma Commission had already made recommendations to this effect to the J&K administration, they are yet to be accepted and implemented. Even after the administration comes up with a plan to implement OBC reservation, it still needs to be followed up with the identification of the municipal constituencies to be reserved, which is likely to take time, the official pointed out. There are more administrative procedures which need to be completed in order to announce and hold elections.According to The Wire‘s previous reports, the delay is a result of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP)’s local unit wanting to defer the exercise at least till the 2024 parliamentary polls. However, there has been anger in Dogri-speaking areas of Jammu over multiple governance and administrative issues.The polls are being delayed despite the Union government’s claims of strengthening grassroots democracy in J&K and its recent submission before the Supreme Court that it is ready for elections in the UT. While the BJP’s local unit is publicly making claims about being ready to face any electoral battle, it has conveyed to the party’s high command that holding local body elections before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls is not in the interests of the party.