Jammu And Kashmir Municipal Poll Votes Being Counted; Congress Wins Leh

The Congress has won all the wards in Leh, poll officials said, as counting of votes for the recently-held municipal polls continued in Jammu and Kashmir. Counting of votes started at 8 am, and all the results will be declared later in the day, election officials said.

For the Srinagar municipal corporation, the counting is being held at the Sher-e-Kashmir International Convention Centre (SKICC) in Srinagar and for the Jammu municipal corporation, it is being held at the Polytechnic Institute near Bikram Chowk.

For other districts of the state, counting is being held at the respective district headquarters.

Tight security arrangements have been made across the state to ensure that counting of votes happen in a peaceful environment.

Municipal elections, which took place in the state after 13 years, were held in four phases. It covered 79 municipal bodies with an electorate of about 17 lakh voters.

A total of 3,372 nominations were filed for 1,145 wards and the voting was held on October 8, 10, 13 and 16.

The Valley witnessed a poor voter turnout while Jammu and Ladakh recorded robust polling.

Of the 598 wards in Kashmir, 231 candidates were elected unopposed, while there were no candidates in 181 wards.

The overall voting percentage for these polls in the state was 35.1 per cent.