Baramulla (Jammu and Kashmir), May 13 (Inditop) Polling began peacefully in the Baramulla and Ladakh Lok Sabha seats of Jammu and Kashmir Wednesday morning.
In Baramulla constituency, voting started on a low key in the towns of Baramulla, Sopore, Pattan and Kupwara. But in Gurez, Karnah and Uri assembly segments voters had started lining up outside the polling stations to exercise their franchise.
According to poll officials, voters had also started queuing up in all the four assembly segments of Kargil, Nobra, Zanskar and Leh in the Ladakh parliamentary constituency.
In Baramulla, there is a triangular contest between the ruling National Conference (NC) candidate Sharief-ud-Din Shariq, opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Muhammad Dilawar Mir and senior separatist leader Sajjad Gani Lone.
In Ladakh, there are four candidates in the fray but the main contest is between Congress candidate P. Namgyal and Ghulam Hassan Khan, an independent.
Authorities have placed all the senior separatist leaders, including Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik, under house arrest to prevent anti-poll protests in the state’s summer capital Srinagar.
rounak