With anticipation building, the counting of votes for all 90 Assembly constituencies across 20 districts in Jammu and Kashmir began at 8 am on Tuesday, October 8. A total of 873 candidates are contesting. The 90 seats include 9 reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) and 7 for Scheduled Castes (SC).
Chief electoral officer PK Pole told reporters that 28 counting centres have been set up across Jammu and Kashmir for counting votes of all the 90 Assembly seats.
Lt Governor Manoj Sinha will nominate five members to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly on the recommendations of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Among these five, two will be women, two Migrant Kashmiri Pandits, one of whom should be a woman, and one representative of the West Pakistan refugees. Similar to Puducherry, these five nominated members will have voting rights during government formation. Given this fact, any political party or a group of political parties and Independents must have 48 members to claim a simple majority in the Legislative Assembly.
Security arrangements are in place in the entire UT as the authorities are anticipating victory processions by the winning candidates and the political parties. There will be no laxity in security till all results are declared and the entire election process is completed by October 10. Section 144 has been declared around all counting centres in the UT.
This will be the first elected government to be formed in Jammu and Kashmir post abrogation of Article 370 as well as after downgrading of the state into two UTs of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. The just concluded legislative Assembly election recorded a voter turnout of 63.45% which is less than the 65.52% recorded in the 2014 Assembly elections. The Assembly poll was held in three phases on September 18, September 25 and October 1. In the first phase, 24 seats went to the poll, in the second phase, 26 and in the third phase, 40 seats went to the poll.
Meanwhile, in Haryana, the BJP is aiming for the third consecutive term while the principal Opposition Congress is hoping to make a comeback. Counting of votes is underway across 93 counting centres in all 22 districts.
Haryana registered 67.90% voting in the elections on October 5. The highest -- 75.36% -- voting was recorded in the Sirsa district and the lowest -- 56.49% -- voting was recorded in the Faridabad district. Constituency-wise, the highest 80.61% voting was recorded in Ellenabad and the lowest 48.27% voting was in Badkhal.
The BJP's vote share in the October 2019 Assembly election was 36.49% when the party could not cross the halfway mark and stitched a post-poll alliance with the JJP. The Congress registered over 15% rise in its vote share in 2024 in comparison to the 2019 Parliamentary election vote share.