90 Polling booths draw Zero Votes in Srinagar

As many as 90 polling booths, mostly in downtown city, saw no voting in Thursday’s elections to the Srinagar Parliamentary seat, sources said. Srinagar recorded zero turnout in as many as 50 polling booths. The majority of these booths were located in Eidgah, Khanyar, Habba Kadal and Batmaloo, sources said. Barring the Sonawar assembly segment, where former chief ministers Farooq Abdullah and Omar cast their votes, all other seven assembly seats recorded a single digit voting percentage with Eidgah at 3.3 per cent by the end of the polling. Sonawar…

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Vote Modi to power if you want to destroy Muslims: BJP leader Ranjeet Bahadur Srivastava

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ranjeet Bahadur Srivastava has asked the voters to cast votes in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi if they wanted to ‘destroy’ Muslims, a media report said. The news gathering Asian News International (ANI) quoted the BJP leader as saying: “In the past five years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made attempts to break the morale of the Muslims. Vote for PM Modi if you want to destroy the breed of Muslims. Despite Partition, the Muslim population is increasing in the country and soon…

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RSS picked Pragya Thakur for Bhopal battle, Trial still on, Bar Sadhvi from polls; Malegaon victim’s father

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) writ ran large in the selection of Malegaon blast-accused Pragya Thakur as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Thakur, out on bail after serving nine years in jail in connection with the 2008 Malegaon blast that killed six people, has long been the poster girl of the Sangh’s Hindutva campaign and is also used to exemplify what the organisation sees as the Congress’s “witch hunt of the RSS and the Hindus”. “The…

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Nuner pledge ‘Not To Vote’ at militant’s funeral, Budgam votes to safeguard Articles 370, 35A

The residents of this village in Ganderbal district of Jammu and Kashmir Thursday stayed away from polling booths after pledging to boycott voting at the funeral of a local militant, who was killed in an encounter with security forces earlier this month. Rahil Rashid Sheikh was killed in Imamsahib area of Shopian district on April 6.Sheikh, a resident of Nuner village of central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district – 32 kms from the state’s summer capital Srinagar – was pursuing M Tech from a college in Chandigarh. He joined the militant ranks…

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Militancy contained to two-and-a-half districts in Kashmir: PM Narendra Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said his government managed to contain “terrorism” to only “two and a half” districts in Jammu and Kashmir and that no bomb blast took place elsewhere in the country in last five years. Addressing a poll rally at Amreli in Gujarat, Modi said that what he learnt in Gujarat helped him during the long Doklam standoff with China in 2017. Referring to various incidents of bomb blasts in the country previously, he said, “In the last five years no bomb blast took place in…

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70% in Udhampur, 14.8% in Srinagar voter turnout, Highest in Chrar-e-Sharif, lowest in Eidgah

In the second phase of the parliamentary elections today, Udhampur recorded 70 per cent voting, while Srinagar 14.8. The polling was, in general, peaceful barring a few places in the Srinagar constituency where incidents of stone-throwing were reported. Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Jammu and Kashmir, Shailendra Kumar, told a press conference here this evening that the poll percentage might be higher as reports from various areas were still coming in. He said Udhampur district had a high poll percentage of 69.8, while Srinagar district recorded the lowest poll percentage…

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