Record 59% turnout in J&K Phase-I polls

VOTERS made a beeline outside polling stations in seven districts of Jammu and Kashmir that voted in the first phase of Assembly elections, the first in 10 years, on Wednesday.

- FAYAZ WANI

Close to 59% of the electorate cast its vote by evening, which is decidedly the highest among the past seven elections.

“I stood in a long queue and waited patiently to cast my vote. It was my first vote since the 1987 polls,” said 72-year-old Ghulam Nabi Mir at a polling station in Tral in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district.

There were long queues at all polling stations in the Tral Payeen area, a remarkable development given that Tral was known as “Kashmir’s Kandhar” during the era of militancy as it was a known stronghold of militants and separatists.