Mata Vaishno Devi seat tops, Kalakote at bottom
*Barring stray incidents, voting remains peaceful
Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, Sept 25: Though the turnout ranged between 68 to 80 percent in 11 Assembly segments spread over three districts of Rajouri, Poonch and Reasi districts in Jammu division which went to polls in second phase of polling today, it was still down in all the constituencies as compared to 2014 Assembly polls. However, the polling process concluded peacefully at all the places though all three districts are militancy-infested having presence of a number of foreign terrorists.
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Fate of a total of 79 candidates including 34 in five segments of Rajouri district, 25 in three constituencies of Poonch district and 20 in three seats of Reasi district including many bigwigs was sealed in the EVMs which will be opened on October 8 when counting for all 90 seats will be taken up.
BJP UT chief Ravinder Raina, former Ministers Jugal Kishore Sharma, Aijaz Khan, Zulfkar Choudhary, Shabir Khan and Syed Mushtaq Bukhari and many ex legislators-Baldev Sharma, Vibodh Gupta, Mumtaz Khan, Javed Rana, Mahroof Khan, Choudhary Akram, Aijaz Jan, Shah Mohammad Tantray, Choudhary Qamar and Surinder Choudhary besides many other notable candidates were in the fray in today’s election for 11 seats of the Jammu region.
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Overall, 57.03 percent voting was recorded in all 26 seats of the UT as compared to 61.38 percent for 24 seats in the phase one held on September 18.
District wise voting percentage stood as 71.81 in Reasi, 71.59 in Poonch and 71.31 in Rajouri.
Biggest drop of 12 percent was witnessed in Darhal (now Budhal) Assembly constituency in Rajouri district.
Shri Mata Vaishno Devi seat in Reasi district recorded 79.95 pc turnout but it too was down as compared to 80.32 percent voting registered in the then Reasi constituency. Reasi segment today witnessed 71 percent voting, way less from 82.68 in 2014 when name of the seat was Gool-Arnas. Gulabgarh constituency in the same district registered 73.49 percent polling, down from 82.09 percent of 2014 polls.
Same was the story in the border district of Rajouri where Darhal constituency (now Budhal) recorded 70.14 percent turnout as against 82.45 of last Assembly elections, a major decline of 12 percent.
Nowshera seat where BJP UT chief Ravinder Raina is pitted against NC’s Surinder Choudhary and Sunderbani-Kalakote segment too registered a decline of nearly eight percent as compared to 2014 polls. Nowshera recorded 72 percent polling as against 79.68 in 2014 while Sunderbani-Kalakote recorded 68.71 percent as compared to 76.66 percent a decade ago.
Turnout in even Rajouri segment was down to 70.64 percent as against 76.09 last time. Thannamandi, a newly created constituency in Rajouri district after the delimitation witnessed 69.66 percent polling.
In the border district of Poonch, the voting percentage went down by around nine in Mendhar segment. While in 2014, Mendhar recorded 80.09 pc polling, today the turnout was 71.08 percent.
Surankote and Poonch-Haveli constituencies registered 75.11 percent and 74.93 percent voting today as compared to 76.49 and 76.25 percent in 2015 respectively.
However, voting remained completely peaceful barring couple of incidents of heated exchanges among the supporters of rival candidates at Nowshera, Poonch and Reasi Assembly segments. All these issues were resolved amicably and the voting went on peacefully.
No re-poll was required in any of the Polling Stations in 11 Assembly constituencies of the three districts.
No terror incident was reported from any of the three districts during the voting today. It may be mentioned here that a number of terror attacks have been reported in the three districts earlier. However, security forces had made elaborate security arrangements for the polling with Army stepping-up anti-terror operations in mountains and paramilitary forces and police taking care of Polling Stations and other vulnerable areas.
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