DDC Election: Counting started at 9 am Tuesday.
Key points:
- In District HQs, all the counting will be completed. Responsibility for counting is delegated to the electorate’s returning officers.
- The DDC polls were the very first electoral exercise in the area after the repeal, on 5 August last year, of Article 370.
- The polls were challenged primarily by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Peoples Gupkar Declaration Alliance (PAGD).
With the counting of votes for the eight-phase District Development Council (DDC) elections in Jammu and Kashmir expected to take place on Tuesday, election commissioner KK Sharma said on Monday that the calculation of votes will commence at 9 a.m. and will take place at the headquarters of its district.
After “randomisation,” the counting workers for the exercise, Sharma stated, will be deployed.
As News Agency ANI cited Sharma stated:
In District HQs, all the counting will be completed. Responsibility for counting is delegated to the electorate’s returning officers. Following randomisation, counting workers would be deployed.
Counting will start tomorrow at 9 am, Sharma was quoted as saying by the news agency ANI. The first voting process took place on 28 November, accompanied by the polls on 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16 December as well as, eventually, on 19 December.
In these elections, a total of 2,178 candidates for 280 DDC seats were in the fray.
The DDC polls were the first election after Article 350:
The DDC polls were the very first electoral exercise in the area after the repeal, on 5 August last year, of Article 370, which resulted in the abolition of the special status of the then united state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The state was further segregated into two separate Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh territories of the Union (UTs). Several Valley political leaders, which include three former chief ministers—Farooq as well as Omar Abdullah, and Mehbooba Mufti—were put under house arrest to avoid the spiralling out of control of the law as well as order situation.
While the Abdullahs was released this year in March, only in October was the Mufti freed.
The Alliance of six political parties:
The polls were challenged primarily by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Peoples Gupkar Declaration Alliance (PAGD), an alliance of six political parties, such as the National Conference of Abdullahs (NC) as well as the Democratic People’s Party of Mufti (PDP), whose shared agenda is the restoration of Article 370.
Allegations levelled by the PAGD:
Allegations were raised by the PAGD leaders during campaigning that while the BJP politicians were able to campaign openly, their candidates were also “restrained” from doing so.
