Amir Tantray
Jammu, May 7: With just six days left in formal polling for the Srinagar parliamentary constituency, the authorities Tuesday sent 473 postal ballots of Kashmiri Pandit voters to Returning Officer (RO) in Srinagar.
These postal ballots belong to Kashmiri Pandits living in different parts of the country and who had already registered as voters to exercise the franchise through postal ballots.
According to reports, casting votes through the postal ballots is exclusively for Kashmiri Pandit voters who have been living their life in exile and Election Commission of India (ECI) has kept a special provision for them to vote through postal ballots.
Giving details, an official associated with the electioneering process said that the postal ballot process was completed today and these ballots have been sent to the RO (Deputy Commissioner Srinagar). “Apart from these postal ballots, more than 13000 Kashmiri Pandit voters are registered for Srinagar Parliamentary constituency who will be exercising their franchise in 23 polling stations established in different parts of Jammu,” the official informed.
The ECI has established 21 polling stations for KP voters in Jammu but two auxiliary polling stations have been established by the local authorities as two polling stations have more than 1500 votes and as per the laid guidelines these auxiliary polling stations needed to be established.
The Srinagar parliamentary constituency will be going for polls on May 13 during the fourth phase of elections and the main contest for this seat is between National Conference’s Aga Ruhullah Mehdi, Peoples Democratic Party’s Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra and J&K Apni Party’s Muhammad Ashraf Mir.
