Voting Begins For Third Phase of Jammu and Kashmir Urban Local Body Polls

Agencies

October 13, 2018

Srinagar, Oct 13: The third phase of polling for civic polls in Kashmir began on Saturday morning amid little hope of change in the trend of low voter turnout in the Valley as most of the wards fall in the separatist hotbed of downtown city and south Kashmir.

Of the 40 wards going to polls, 20 fall in Srinagar city's downtown area, where the voter turnout has been generally low since the eruption of militancy in the state in 1989.

The wards in downtown city going to polls are Khanqah-e-Mualla, Maharajgunj, Jamia Masjid, Makhdoom Sahib, Khwaja Bazaar, Aqilmir Khanyar, Rozabal, Daulatabad, Islamyarbal, Nawab Bazaar, Nawa Kadal, Safakadal, Rathpora, Edigah, Palpora and Tarabal.

Ten other wards in the civil lines area of the city, where polling will be held on Saturday, are Lal Chowk, Rajbagh, Ikhrajpora, Mehjoor Nagar, Natipora, Chanapora, Budshah Nagar, Baghat Barzulla, Hyderpora and Rawalpora.

The voter turnout, however, is expected to be high in 13 wards in the Uri area of north Kashmir's Baramulla district, which has traditionally been a high polling area. A similar trend might be seen in seven wards in the Mattan area of Anantnag district, which has a significant Kashmiri migrant population.

Although 207 wards in the state were scheduled to go to polls in the third phase, polling will be held only in 96 wards -- 56 in Samba district in Jammu division and 40 in the Valley.

While results for 49 wards in the Valley were declared uncontested at the completion of the nomination process on 3 October, there were no nominations filed for 62 wards — mostly falling in Pulwama and Anantnag district of south Kashmir.

As many as 365 candidates are in the fray — 242 for four municipal bodies in Samba district and 123 for Valley's four municipal bodies. The polling will begin at 6 am and conclude at 4 pm, officials said. The election staff, along with polling material, has reached respective polling stations, they added.

A thick security blanket has been thrown around the polling stations, while security forces are carrying out area domination exercises over the past couple of days for ensuring incident-free election, the officials said.

The National Conference, the PDP and the CPI(M) have boycotted the polls due to the legal challenge to Article 35-A of the Constitution in the Supreme Court.

The voter turnout in the first two phases of the civic polls in the Valley has been low. While 8.3 per cent of the electorate turned up to vote in the 83 wards in the first phase on 8 October, the poll percentage fell to an abysmal 3.4 per cent in the second phase held on 10 October.

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‘Pakistan has no moral right to question India’s military operation’: Pak Islamist lawmaker exposes own country’s hypocrisy

News Network

December 23,2025

A Pakistani lawmaker has called out the hypocrisy of his country's leadership, drawing a parallel between Islamabad's military actions against Kabul and India's 'Operation Sindoor'.

Condemning the Pakistan army, led by Asim Munir, for strikes on Afghanistan - which resulted in civilian casualties - Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-F (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman questioned the consistency of Islamabad's logic. He argued that if Pakistan's cross-border attacks are considered justified, then the country has little ground to object when India enters Pakistani territory to eliminate terrorists.

Rehman was addressing the 'Majlis-e-Ittehad-e-Ummat' conference on Monday in Karachi's Lyari. The town recently gained international attention as the setting for the Ranveer Singh-starrer Dhurandhar, which depicted the intersection of informants and operatives within the Lyari underworld.

"If you say that we attacked our enemy in Afghanistan and justify this, then India can also say that it attacked Bahawalpur, Muridke, and the headquarters of groups responsible for the attack in Kashmir," Rehman said, referring to India's retaliatory strikes. "Then how can you raise objections? The same accusations are now being levelled against Pakistan by Afghanistan. How do you justify both positions?"

The JUI-F chief's remarks specifically referenced 'Operation Sindoor'.

On May 7, Indian armed forces carried out pre-dawn missile strikes on nine terror targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, including the Jaish-e-Mohammad stronghold of Bahawalpur and Lashkar-e-Taiba's base in Muridke.

Pak-Afghanistan Tension

Fazlur Rehman has been a consistent critic of the Pakistani government's policy towards Afghanistan. In October, during a peak in bilateral tensions, he offered to mediate between the two nations. According to a Dawn report, he stated, "In the past, I have played a role in reducing tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and I can still do so."

Rehman is known to wield significant influence within the region and remains the only Pakistani lawmaker to have met with the Taliban's supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada.

Recently, India condemned Pakistan's fresh strikes on Afghanistan. "We have seen reports of border clashes in which several Afghan civilians have been killed," Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said at a weekly media briefing.

"We condemn such attacks on innocent Afghan people. India strongly supports the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Afghanistan," he said.

A spokesperson for the Taliban regime claimed Pakistan initiated the attacks and that Kabul was "forced to respond".

The two countries have been locked in an increasingly bitter dispute since the Taliban authorities retook control in Kabul in 2021, with Islamabad accusing its neighbour of harbouring terrorists - a charge that the Afghan government denies.

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