Polling started Tuesday for the third and last phase of assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir for 40 seats in 7 districts including Jammu. More than 3.9 million registered voters will choose 415 candidates that includes former deputy chief ministers Tara Chand and Muzaffar Baig.
Voting opened at 7 a.m. in 16 assembly segments of three border districts in north Kashmir. There are strict security precautions which have been upheld, there over 400 security force companies. Voting will close at 6 p.m. Some of the constituencies are Baramulla, Uri, Kupwara and Bandipora constituencies. However, voting also commenced in 24 constituencies of the Jammu region including the Udhampur, Samba and Kathua districts.
Main contenders in this phase are Devender Singh Rana, Raman Bhalla, Usman Majid and some other aspirants. Altogether, the Election Commission has established 5,060 polling centers and 974 of them are in urban and 4,086 of them in rural areas to enable people to cast their votes freely. Strike measures have been extension to increase the voting, 240 ‘special’ polling stations, 50 ‘pink’ stations by women personnel, 43 stations by disabled personnel.
For the first time after the scrapping of Article 370 in 2019, the West Pakistan refugees, Valmiki Samaj and the Gorkha community will be exercising their franchise in Assembly elections. Further, there are 24 special polling station for migrant voters all from Kashmir. The outcome will be declared on 8th, October after recording more or less an impressive stake casting ratio in the previous phases, where the ratio was 61.38% in first phase and 57.31% in the second.
