Anantnag, May 24: After a marathon canvassing by contestants vying for the Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha seat, the constituency is going to polls on Saturday during the sixth phase of polling, the penultimate leg of the Lok Sabha 2024 elections.
The polling will be held from 7 am to 6 pm.
“However, the voting will continue even after 6 pm, if the voters’ queues are still there on the polling station premises,” an official communiqué said.
The campaigning for the newly-carved out parliamentary constituency ended on Thursday evening with the contenders exerting considerable efforts to secure the support of the electorate.
A total of 20 candidates including former chief minister and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader Mehbooba Mufti, senior National Conference (NC) leader Mian Altaf, and Apni Party leader Zaffar Iqbal Manhas are in the fray.
Although the electrifying canvassing ended at 6 pm on Thursday, the constituency, which is divided by the imposing Pir Panjal mountain range, remained decorated by buntings, hoardings, and banners of different political parties.
Spread over five districts, three in Kashmir and two in Jammu, the seat was originally scheduled for polls on May 7.
However, the Election Commission of India (ECI) rescheduled the polls at the request of several political parties other than NC and PDP, citing inclement weather as the reason.
According to the official data, there are 18,36,576 voters enrolled in 5 districts – Kulgam, Anantnag, Poonch, Rajouri, and 36-Zainanpora assembly constituency of Shopian district.
The voters include 9,33,647 male and 9,02,902 female voters and 27 third gender voters.
Around 17,967 Persons with Disability and 540 persons above the age of 100 years will cast their ballots in the parliamentary constituency.
The ECI has set up 2338 polling stations across the Anantnag-Rajouri parliamentary constituency.
Four election staffers including the Presiding Officer will be stationed at every polling station.
In total, over 9000 polling staffers including reserves will be deployed on duty.
The twin districts of Pir Panjal region – Rajouri and Poonch – have 19 Border Polling Stations.
On Thursday, the administration sent polling staff and other allied material to different polling stations across the Lok Sabha constituency.
Meanwhile, elaborate security arrangements were made to ensure free and fair polling.
