The Union home ministry has asked security agencies to prepare a ground report on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, where infiltration and targeted killings have increased over the past one year.

Sources said the ministry was preparing for Assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir in April-May next year — the first since the erstwhile state was downgraded to a Union Territory in August 2019 — but stressed that no final decision had been taken.

“The ministry is considering Assembly elections in April-May next year but nothing is final yet. However, it has sought a report from the security agencies,” a home ministry official said.

Most parties in Jammu and Kashmir have been demanding Assembly polls.

Hundreds of Kashmiri Pandit families — even some that had stayed back during the 1990 exodus — have fled Kashmir following a series of targeted killings by militants in the past few months.

Many of them have publicly castigated the government for failing to give them security, shredding the authorities’ claim of peace returning to the region since the August 2019 changes.

Following delimitation, Jammu and Kashmir will now have 90 Assembly constituencies — 43 in the Jammu division and 47 in Kashmir — nine of them reserved for the Scheduled Tribes.

The erstwhile state had 87 seats — 46 in Kashmir, 37 in Jammu and four in Ladakh.

During the 2019 reorganisation, Ladakh was carved out as a separate Union Territory, but one without a legislature.