Counting staff takes eight hours to count few thousand votes polled during civic polls in Sgr

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Counting staff takes eight hours to count few thousand votes polled during civic polls in Sgr

BJP receives shock as party wins just four seats, independents run away with 70 percent share

10/20/2018 10:21:11 PM

Jehangir Rashid
Early Times Report

SRINAGAR, Oct 20: In this age of information technology when the whole world is on a finger tip the authorities of Jammu & Kashmir continue to 'crawl' at a snail's pace and same got reflected today yet again.
It took the staff deputed to count votes for the municipal elections more than eight hours to count few thousand votes polled in the Srinagar district. The inordinate delay in counting of votes meant that the consolidated figure with regards to final results of municipal polls in the state is released only after 10 hours.
Like other parts of state the counting of votes at Sher-I-Kashmir International Conference Centre (SKICC) began at 9 AM. Given the fact that only few thousand votes were cast in the Srinagar district it was expected that the results would be out in couple of hours, but that was not to be.
Sources told Early Times that the counting staff was directed to go slow with respect to the counting of votes. The inordinate delay in counting of votes resulted into a situation where the results of Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) were declared only after 5 PM. The final results were declared by 7 PM.
It would be in place to mention here that election results for the other municipal committees and councils of the Kashmir valley were declared by noon. By 1 PM the picture was clear vis-à-vis with respect to the party position in the different districts of Kashmir valley. However, such a picture with respect to Srinagar became clear after eight hours or so.
When the results came out shock was in store for Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) as the party could manage to win just four seats. More than 70 percent seats (53 seats) out of 74 seats in SMC went into the kitty of independents with the BJP left high and dry. The poor show in the SMC by BJP proved that the party is not acceptable to the people of summer capital of the state.
"The boycott by National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party did not help the BJP in any way as the party's winning number remained in single digits. The BJP leaders should introspect as what went wrong in the municipal polls in the Srinagar district more so when the two leading regional parties remained away from civic polls," said sources.
Few days back BJP's State President Ravinder Raina who represents Nowshera in legislative assembly claimed that the party would emerge as the single largest party in the Jammu and Srinagar municipal corporations. Raina also said that the Mayors of Srinagar and Jammu would be from BJP but that seems to be a distant reality as far as Srinagar is concerned.
Congress leader Tariq Hameed Karra also received a shock as his wife Asifa Tariq Karra failed to win from the Lawaypora ward of SMC. Asifa lost to independent candidate Fancy Jan by a margin of 12 votes. In the last municipal polls Asifa had won the civic polls from the Mujgund ward of Srinagar district.

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