The electoral system and process in the new Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir will get rolling with fresh delimitation of its parliamentary and assembly constituencies. The Centre has indicated that it would soon set up a commission for the purpose.Officials in the EC told ET that the poll panel is closely studying all legal and constitutional aspects related to the issue and will wait for official communications from the government before it gets into action.The process of delimitation, however, may take several months, which means elections to the new UT may not happen anytime soon.The last such full delimitation in a state was held in 2014 when Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated to create Telangana. J&K itself has not seen a delimitation exercise since 1995 and it has, in fact, been a contentious issue.In 2002, the then NC government had amended J&K Representation of the People Act 1957 and Section 47(3) of the Constitution of J&K, freezing delimitation of the state’s constituencies. It has often been argued that delimitation exercise was held back deliberately to ensure greater representation of Kashmir in the assembly and Parliament.In the existing J&K assembly, which now stands dissolved, there are 46 seats from Kashmir, 37 from Jammu, and four from Ladakh.Delimitation essentially means revising and redrawing boundaries and size of each constituency to roughly represent an equal number of people/population. A Delimitation Commission is set up for the purpose.As of date, all assembly and parliamentary constituencies are to be delimited on the basis of the 2001 Census, under the provisions of Delimitation Act, 2002.As per existing Election Commission guidelines and the 84th and 87th amendments to the Constitution, the total population of a state (2001 Census) is divided by the total number of assembly constituencies in the state to obtain the “state average per assembly constituency”.“This state average shall be the guiding factor for delimiting the constituencies in such a manner that each constituency, so far as practicable, has an equal population,” the guidelines say.A deviation to the extent of 10% plus or minus from the state/district average is usually considered acceptable to the commission if the geographical features, means of communication, public convenience, contiguity of the areas, and necessity to avoid breaking of administrative units so demand.Seats have to be reserved for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in proportion to their population to the total population of the state and this allocation is to be worked out separately both for the assembly and parliamentary constituencies in each state.The Delimitation Commission puts out working papers and draft proposals and hold public sittings on the same. These are notified in the Gazette of India and the state’s gazette after the President’s approval.The Delimitation Commission’s orders have the force of law and cannot be called in question before any court. The copies of its orders are laid before the House of the People and the State Legislative Assembly concerned, but no modifications are permissible therein by them.