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An estimated 41.4 percent of voters exercised their voting rights on Tuesday for the third of the four-phase elections in India-controlled Kashmir amid a series of violence which killed 14 people.
Voters in 27 constituencies, with an estimated 1.8 million voters spread over four districts of Udhampur, Kathua, Pulwama andAnantnag, went to polls to decide the fate of 223 candidates in the third phase, which was described as the "most difficult" by Election Commission in New Delhi.
According to the Press Trust of India (PTI), the highest turnout of 59 percent was recorded in Kathua district, followed by Udhampur, 56 percent, militancy-infested Pulwama, 28 percent, and Anantnag, 25 percent.
The turnout was lower compared to the first two phases of the polling for the 87-seat assembly when 48 percent of electorate exercised their franchise respectively on Sept. 16 and 24. The last phase is scheduled on October 8.
Shortly after polling closed, militants blew up a vehicle of the border security force, which was returning after duty, killing six soldiers on the spot and seriously injured two others in Avantipura area of Pujwama districts, PTI said.
Just minutes before the polling began in the morning, three heavily-armed militants dressed in police uniform fired indiscriminately on a bus from New Delhi at around 6:45 a.m. local time (1:15 GMT), killing eight people, five of them on the spot, and injuring another 12 at Hiranagar on the national highway from New Delhi to Jammu, a major city in south Kashmir.
Director General of Police A.K. Suri was quoted as saying that one of the militants belonging to the suicide squad was later shot dead by Indian security troops while the hunt was on for the other two.
Violence and attacks took place at over a dozen polling stations in Anantnag and Phulwana districts on the day when anti-Indian forces launched rockets and triggered grenade and other explosives, leaving some 20 people injured, PTI reported earlier.
The polling was held in 16 assembly constituencies in Pulwama and Anantnag districts, considered hot-bed of militancy, and 11 in border districts of Kathua and Udhampur in Jammu region to the south of Kashmir valley.
Chief electoral official in Kashmir Pramod Jain told the press that "after very successful and violence-free first two phases of elections, our friends from across the border made a desperate attempt to disrupt the polls."
(Xinhua News Agency October 2, 2002)
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