18 seats in Jammu and Kashmir and 15 seats in Jharkhand will go to polls in the 4th phase of Assembly Election on Sunday.
In Jammu and Kashmir after hectic campaigning, leaders and candidates of different political parties are going door-to-door to woo voters in favour of their nominees in 18 assembly segments, spread over Srinagar, Anantnag and Shopian districts in the Kashmir valley and Samba in Jammu region, going to polls on Sunday. Besides door-to-door campaigning, the political parties are also finalising their polling agents and strategy for Sunday's voting which is very crucial for government formation in the state.
Security forces and state police personnel have been put on maximum alert to ensure peaceful polling as there are apprehensions that militants may try to disrupt the poll process. Meanwhile, Srinagar police has constituted eight anti-mobile voters squad to check mobile voters in Srinagar that is going for polls on Saturday. The squads will act against any mobile voter on the poll day and inform the concerned zonal SSPs and SSP Police Control Room.
This will be testing phase for the ruling National Conference which has to defend 9 seats, including eight in Srinagar as the party made a clean sweep in 2008 in the Srinagar district. The opposition Peoples Democratic party (PDP) has to defend six constituencies, Congress two and National Panther Party (PDP) one. However, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) which has not won any seat in 2008 has left no stone unturned, this time, to woo voters to open account in Srinagar.
Prominent among 182 candidates in the fray included Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, Peoples Democratic Party Patron, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Legislative Assembly speaker Mubarak Gul, National Conference senior minister and two Congress ministers besides several sitting and former MLAs. With the fourth phase, the polling process will come to an end in Kashmir Valley tomorrow as all the 20 seats going to polls in the fifth and the last phase on December 20 are in Jammu region.
Election for 15 Assembly seats in four districts of Jharkhand will begin on Sunday from seven in the morning and will end at 3 PM, except for Bokaro and Dhanbad, where polling would be allowed upto 5PM due to use of additional technology by which voter can see the printouts of their choice of votes, other than in EMV.
Nearly 43 lakhs voters of Deoghar, Giridih, Bokaro and Dhanbad districts will have options to choose from 217 candidates. Nearly 27 thousands poll officials and a larger number of security force is deployed to ensure free and fair election. There would be 183 ideal booths, where additional arrangements for voters are made.
Although, Congress and CPI(ML) have their isolated pockets of influence, the main contest is between the BJP,JMM and JVM. Besides others, JVM President and ex- Chief Minister Babulal Marandi and three serving Ministers' fate are to be decided on Sunday.
