Srinagar/Jammu, Oct 8 (WISHAVWARTA/IANS) As people of J&K await the results, the counting of votes started for all the 90 Assembly constituencies in 20 districts at 8 a.m. on Tuesday. The political fate of 873 candidates, including senior leaders of the National Conference (NC), BJP, Congress, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), People’s ConferenceC, Apni Party, CPI(M), Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) and Independent candidates will be decided. Those waiting for the people’s verdict are former Chief Minister and vice president of NC, Omar Abdullah; former Deputy CMs — Muzaffar Hussain Beigh, Kavinder Gupta (BJP), Tera Chand (Congress); former senior ministers — Abdur Rahim Rather (NC), Ali Mohammad Sagar (NC), Sakina Itoo (NC), Choudhary Ramzan (NC), Ghulam Nabi Hanjura (PDP), Abdul Rehman Veeri (PDP), Asiya Naqash (PDP), Syed Basharat Bukhari (PDP), Yusuf Tarigami CPI(M), Sajad Gani Lone (PC), Imran Raza Choudhary (PC), Syed Altaf Bukhari (Apni Party), Ghulam Hassan Mir (Apni Party), Raman Bhalla (Congress), Shamlal Choudhary (BJP), Choudhary Zulfikar Ali (BJP), JK BJP president Ravinder Raina and JKPCC president Tariq Hameed Qarra. There are 90 Assembly seats in 20 districts, including 9 ST and 7 SC seats. Chief electoral officer P.K. Pole told reporters that 28 counting centres have been set up across J&K for counting votes of all the 90 Assembly seats. Postal votes will be counted first. Lt Governor Manoj Sinha will nominate five members to the J&K Assembly on the recommendations of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Among these five, two will be women, two Migrant Kashmiri Pandits, one of whom should be a woman, and one representative of the West Pakistan refugees. Similar to Puducherry, these five nominated members will have voting rights during government formation. Given this fact, any political party or a group of political parties and Independents must have 48 members to claim a simple majority in the Legislative Assembly. Exit Polls have put the NC-Congress alliance in a strong position with the regional party getting the lion’s share of the seats. BJP is expected to slightly improve on its tally of 25 seats which it had won in the 2014 polls while the PDP, which had won 28 seats in the 2014 polls, is predicted to win less than 10 seats this time by the Exit Polls. The pollsters have not given much of a chance to the new and emerging parties like the People’s Conference (PC), Apni Party, Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) of Ghulam Nabi Azad and Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) of Lok Sabha member, Rashid Engineer. These parties along with Independents are expected to win around 10 seats. Security arrangements are in place in the entire UT as the authorities are anticipating victory processions by the winning candidates and the political parties. There will be no laxity in security till all results are declared and the entire election process is completed by October 10. Section 144 has been declared around all counting centres in the UT. This will be the first elected government to be formed in Jammu and Kashmir post abrogation of Article 370 as well as after downgrading of the state into two UTs of J&K and Ladakh. The officials said a three-tier security set-up has been put in place at all counting centres across Jammu and Kashmir. Only authorised counting agents of the contesting candidates and staff posted on counting duty will be allowed inside the counting halls. Tally of votes for each candidate will be announced after every round of counting on the public address system outside the counting halls. The just concluded legislative Assembly election recorded a voter turnout of 63.45 per cent which is less than the 65.52 per cent recorded in the 2014 Assembly elections. The Assembly poll was held in three phases on September 18, September 25 and October 1. In the first phase, 24 seats went to the poll, in the second phase, 26 and in the third phase, 40 seats went to the poll. –IANS sq/dpb
