Agencies
Voting is underway for the panchayat polls in Jammu and Kashmir amid calls for a boycott by political parties. Polling will be held in six districts of the Kashmir Valley, two in Ladakh and seven districts in the Jammu region. 427 candidates are in the fray for 536 Sarpanch Halqas and 5,951 candidates for 4,048 Panch wards for the first phase of the Panchayat polls.
The National Conference (NC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the CPI(M) have announced that they will stay away from the elections.The NC, which earlier boycotted the municipal and panchayat polls in Jammu and Kashmir, however, called for Assembly polls saying it would fight that election to prevent the BJP from "installing its proxies via the backdoor". |
