J&K assembly elections: Valley to have polling station floating on Dal Lake

Assembly polls have not been held in Jammu and Kashmir since 2014.

Jammu & Kashmir, which is headed for the shortest election in the last two decades, will have floating polling stations on Dal Lake.

Elections in the newly carved out Union territory will be held in three phases on September 18 and 25 and October 1. The votes will be counted on October 4. While 24 seats will go to the polls in the first phase, elections will be held in 26 seats and 40 seats in the second and third phases respectively. In 2014, the Assembly polls were held in five phases.

While announcing election dates on Friday, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar made a special mention about three polling stations that are unique due to their geographies

Srinagar’s Dal Lake will have three floating polling stations. These will be part of the total 11,838 polling stations to be set up in 9,169 locations across the Valley.

Ferries and shikaras will be used to ferry voters. “This ensures accessibility in otherwise unreachable areas,” said Kumar. “We have seen long queues of people in Jammu and Kashmir during Lok Sabha polls, which showed they want to be part of the democratic process and preferred ballot over bullet."

The Khar Mohalla Aabi Karpora polling station can only cater to three voters. Of the 90 seats, 74 are general seats, nine are for Scheduled Caste candidates, and seven for Scheduled Tribes. The number of voters in the UT is 87.09 lakh, of which 44.46 lakh are men and 42.62 lakh women. The final electoral roll will be published on August 20.

The announcement by the Election Commission comes months after the Supreme Court upheld the Centre's decision to scrap Jammu and Kashmir's special status and directed that Assembly elections be held by September 30.

Assembly polls have not been held in Jammu and Kashmir since 2014. The polls were due to be held in early 2019 following the dissolution of the legislative body of the erstwhile state in 2018. However, after the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories in 2019, the Assembly polls could not be held due to various reasons including a delimitation exercise that was completed in 2022.