A NEW POWER PLAY IN J&K
On October 17, the Union government amended the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayati Raj Rules, 1996, paving the way for elected District Development Councils (DDCs), a new third tier in the panchayati raj set-up of the Union territory that came into being on August 5, 2019.
Members of these new district councils will be elected directly by voters of the Union territory. The move to create yet another layer of administration in the erstwhile state, in the absence of a legislature (the last state assembly was dissolved in November 2018), and even while a controversial delimitation exercise to redraw constituencies is on, has predictably raised the hackles of
