As many as 62 percent registered voters of displaced Kashmiri pandit community participated in ongoing Lok Sabha polls for first of the three phased election for Anantnag parliamentary constituency.
Though unhappy over ‘cumbersome’ voter registration processadopted for them by the Election Commission, pandits voted for change and inhope of returning to their homes in the Kashmir valley.
As per election commission a total of 6901 voters ofAnantnag district consisting of six assembly segments ¬- Anantnag, Doru,Kokernag, Shangus, Bijbehara and Pahalgam – were registered with M-Form out ofwhich 4101 exercised their franchise at 22 special polling stations set up inJammu, Udhampur and New Delhi, with overall percentage of 62.34.
Talking to Greater Kashmir, Assistant Returning Officer(Migrants), Delhi Digvijay Gupta said that the polling station at Delhiregistered 74 percent turnout as out of 19 registered voters, 14 turned up andcast their vote. He said that seven males and same numbers of females casttheir votes till 4.00 PM.
In Jammu, authorities set up 21 polling stations for 6745migrant voters of Anantnag district, out of which 4015 exercised theirfranchise.
As per ARO (Migrants) Jammu Pankaj Anand “2189 males and1826 females cast their votes with voting percentage of 60.80.”
In Udhampur, 52.44 percent migrant voters exercised theirfranchise for Anantnag district. According to ARO (Migrants) Udhampur AnirudhRai, out of 137 registered voters, 72 votes were polled by the migrants.
Meanwhile, members of Kashmiri Pandit community stagedprotest outside polling station at Jagti after finding their names missing fromthe voter list and faulty EVM at Barnai polling booth.
“We had filled up our M forms but despite that our names aremissing from the voter list,” they said.