Seven-phased held Kashmir polls announced

NEW DELHI: The Election Commission has announced the poll dates for Assembly election in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Indian Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswamy said, "The Commission has decided that elections will be held in seven phases in J&K and first phase will begin on November 17."

"The second phase of elections will be held on November 23, the third phase on November 30 and the fourth phase will be held on December 7," he said.

He said that the fifth, sixth and seventh phases will be held on December 13, 17 and 24.

The election commissioner said, the polling will be held in 87 Assembly seats. The counting of votes will be held on December 28.

He also said that appropriate security arrangements have been made and forces will man all the important places.

There were rifts within the EC about holding elections in the state.

The Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalswamy was not in favour as he felt the conditions were not favourable right now due to reasons like low voter turnout, state officials refusing poll duty and parties not cooperating.

But the other election commissioners like Navin Chawla were in favour of elections in the state.

The last time the elections took place in J&K was in 2002 when the Congress-PDP coalition came to power by defeating the National Conference.

The 2002 elections were held in four phases in more than 14,000 polling stations.



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