The first round of five phase polling in the sensitive State of Jammu and Kashmir is all set to begin from Jammu-Poonch lok Sabha seat — the State’s largest parliamentary constituency with an electorate size of over 17.63 lakh voters on Thursday.
A total number of 19 candidates are in the fray, including two time sitting MP Madan lal Sharma, PDP candidate Yashpal Sharma, and BJP candidate Jugal Kishore Sharma.
The lok Sabha constituency is set to witness a triangular contest with both BJP and PDP candidates emerging potential challengers to the joint alliance candidate. To ensure an incident-free and fair polls, the Election Commission has deployed an estimated population of 20,000 security personnel to guard 2,271 polling stations spread across four districts of Jammu province.
According to official sources, “Over 100 CRPF companies, more than 5000 state police men and BSF troops would stand guard to protect the electors in the first phase of polling”. The polling parties were dispatched along with necessary election material and EVM machines under tight security arrangments from different district headquarters.
Election Commission has set up 1153 polling stations in Jammu, 246 in Samba, 373 in Poonch and 499 in Rajouri district to facilitate smooth polling. At least 100 polling stations have been categorised as hyper-sensitive and 600 others as sensitive by the election commission on the basis of their vulnerability to incidents of poll related violence/clashes and proximity to line of Control and International Border.
The election authorities have also identified 52 polling stations close to the IB and the loC where voting can get affected if there is a firing from across the border on the day of polling.
“A contingency plan is already in place to shift these polling stations to safer locations if there is any violation of ceasefire on the IB and the loC on the day of polling,” said a senior poll official. As per the Election Commission, there are 17,63,579 voters in the parliamentary seat out of which 9, 25, 044 are male and 8, 38,535 females.
Forty three (43) per cent polling stations in border district of Poonch and thirty four (34) percent in Rajouri have been placed under sensitive or hyper sensitive categories in the wake of militancy threats following melting of snow from upper reaches. The parliamentary constituency had earlier witnessed low key campaigning. None of the star campaigners from the Congress party or BJP campaigned in the area.
BJP’s PM nominee Narendra Modi had addressed one joint election meeting in Hiranagar on March 26. On the other hand PDP patron Mufti Mohd Sayeed and PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti took command of campaigning and addressed series of meetings in frontier districts of Rajouri and Poonch.