A notification, allegedly from the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department, is circulating on social media (here, here, and here), which claims that Panchayat polls in Jammu and Kashmir will be held after November 2025. Let’s verify the claim made in the post in this article.
Claim: A notification issued by the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department states that Panchayat elections in Jammu and Kashmir will be held after November 2025.
Fact: The viral notification is fake. No official notification or credible media reports about Panchayat elections in Jammu and Kashmir were found. Both the Chief Minister of J&K and the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj clarified on X that the notification is fake. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Upon close observation, we found several spelling mistakes in the viral letter, which is highly unlikely in an official document.
We then reviewed the official website of Jammu & Kashmir’s Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department, but found no notification regarding the Panchayat elections. We also did not come across any credible media reports supporting this claim.
We learned that the local body elections in Jammu & Kashmir were last held in 2018. However, unlike the 2018 notification issued by the Chief Electoral Officer, the viral letter carries the signature of the Secretary to the Government (Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department), which is unusual. This inconsistency also made us doubt the authenticity of the viral document.
Further, we found an X post dated 05 August 2025 on the official X account of the Chief Minister of J&K, which debunks the viral notification and labels it as “fake news”.
We also found an X post from the official handle of the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, clarifying that the viral letter is fake. The department stated that no official notification has been issued regarding Panchayat Elections in J&K and emphasised that only the State Election Commission is authorised to announce election dates, urging people not to fall for misinformation.
To sum up, the viral notification claiming that Panchayat elections in J&K will be held after November 2025 is fake.
