Counting of 6 seats to be held at 8 places
*Highest votes to be counted in Jammu, lowest in Ladakh
Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, May 30: Fate of a Union Minister, two ex-Chief Ministers, seven ex-Ministers in erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir, ex MPs, sitting and former Chairpersons-cum-CECs of Hill Councils and many other bigwigs will be decided in six Lok Sabha seats of J&K and Ladakh UTs during counting on June 4 for which all arrangements have been made by the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Returning Officers and civil administration.
Counting for six Parliamentary constituencies will take place at eight places. While counting of votes for four seats including Jammu, Udhampur, Srinagar and Baramulla will be done at one place each, the counting of Anantnag-Rajouri and Ladakh seats will be held at two places each.
Official sources told the Excelsior that counting of votes for Jammu Parliamentary seat will take place at MAM and Polytechnic Colleges. For Udhampur constituency, the votes will be counted at Government Degree College Kathua.
Counting for Srinagar segment will be held at SKICC and that of Baramulla constituency at Government Degree College Baramulla.
Votes for Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha seat will be counted at two places. Counting for 11 Assembly segments of South Kashmir will take place at Government Degree College Anantnag while counting for seven Assembly seats of Rajouri and Poonch districts will be held at Government Post Graduate College Rajouri.
For lone Parliamentary seat of Ladakh, votes of Leh and Kargil districts will be counted at the respective district headquarters separately.
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Media Galleries have been set up at all counting centres and trends will be regularly available there.
Nearly 6000 officials will be involved in the counting for five Parliamentary constituencies in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, the officials said, adding If everything goes well results of all seats are expected to be declared by the evening of June 4.
Highest number of 12,86,144 votes will be counted in Jammu Parliamentary constituency followed by 11, 08, 206 votes in Udhampur Lok Sabha seat. Baramulla is the only other seat where above 10 lakh votes have been polled. In this segment, 10,27,084 votes have to be counted by the staff deployed by the Election authorities.
In Anantnag-Rajouri constituency, tentatively 9.75 lakh votes have been cast. Almost half of the votes will be counted at Government Post Graduate College Rajouri and another half at Government Degree College Anantnag.
Srinagar Lok Sabha seat has polled lowest number of votes 6,72,653 in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
In the Union Territory of Ladakh, lone Lok Sabha constituency has polled 1,32,727 votes out of a total of 1,84,808. With counting of votes scheduled for two places-Leh and Kargil district headquarters, result of this seat is expected to be declared much earlier than five seats of Jammu and Kashmir.
Among bigwigs, whose fate will be decided on June 4, are Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) for last 10 years, Dr Jitendra Singh, who is seeking third term from Udhampur seat and Jugal Sharma of BJP, who is also trying to score hat-trick from Jammu constituency.
Two former Chief Ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti are in the fray from Baramulla and Anantnag-Rajouri constituencies respectively while former Ministers in the contest include Raman Bhalla (Jammu), Choudhary Lal Singh and Ghulam Mohammad Saroori (Udhampur), Aga Ruhullah Mehdi and Ashraf Mir (Srinagar), Sajjad Lone (Baramulla) and Mian Altaf (Anantnag-Rajouri).
Engineer Rashid (Baramulla) is former MLA while Zaffar Manhas (Anantnag-Rajouri) is ex MLC. Rashid contested the election from Tihar jail.
Fate of sitting Chairperson-cum-CEC Leh Hill Development Council Tashi Gyalson (BJP), former Chairperson-cum-CEC Kargil Hill Council Mohammad Haneefa Jan (Independent) and Leader of Opposition (LOP) in Leh Hill Council Tsering Namgyal (Congress) will be decided on Ladakh Lok Sabha seat.
Omar, Mehbooba, Choudhary Lal Singh and Fayyaz Mir (PDP candidate from Baramulla) are also former MPs. Omar was also a Minister in the Vajpayee Government.
Officials said training for the counting staff is on and will be completed by June 2 at all the places. At some of the places, it is nearing completion.
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