Centre, administration should clear stand if they want to conduct panchayat elections: J&K Congress

Amid reports of the Jammu and Kashmir municipal elections likely to get deferred, the state Congress chief Ghulam Ahmad Mir on Wednesday asked the Centre and the administration to clear their stand on whether they wanted to conduct the polls in the state or if it was a 'gimmick'.

Mir took a jibe at the Centre saying that the polls were declared without taking stock of the ground situation.

Earlier on Wednesday, a report by news agency IANS quoting sources said the government of Jammu and Kashmir is likely to defer the municipal elections scheduled in October 2018 to January 2019.

This comes after two major political parties -- the National Conference (NC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) announced they were boycotting the polls.

A decision announcing deferment of the municipal polls is likely to be taken at the State Administrative Council (SAC) meeting chaired by Governor Satya Pal Malik on Wednesday.

The panchayat polls were scheduled for November-December 2018. "The schedule already announced for the panchayat polls will remain unchanged," an official in the know of things said.

After the NC announced the boycott of the municipal and panchayat polls, the PDP made a similar announcement on Monday.