Srinagar seat: Highest polling in Chrar, lowest in Eidgah

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, April 18

Chrar-e-Sharif, an Assembly segment in Budgam district and home to the shrine of Kashmir’s revered saint Sheikh Noor-ud-din, lived to its reputation on Thursday as it topped the voter turnout in the Srinagar parliamentary constituency.

The central Kashmir’s shrine-town constituency polled a little over 30 per cent, the highest in the Srinagar constituency, which is spread over three districts and 15 Assembly segments.

The polling in Chrar-e-Sharif, which has an electorate of 81,879, had a slow start with 1 per cent votes cast by 9 am. It gradually picked pace as 7.1 per cent votes were cast by 11 am, 9.5 by 1 pm and 24.2 by 3 pm.

An hour before the voting ended, Chrar-e-Sharif became the only segment in the Srinagar constituency to cross the 30 per cent mark.

Even though the Chrar-e-Sharif segment polled the highest votes in the Srinagar constituency this election, it was drastically low compared to 65.65 per cent votes cast there in the 2014 General Elections.

Chrar-e-Sharif, which has traditionally remained the bastion of the National Conference (NC) before the PDP routed it out in the last Assembly election, along with Kangan were the only segments in Srinagar which had polled above 50 per cent votes in 2014.

In contrast to Chrar-e-Sharif, the Eidgah segment in Srinagar district accounted for the lowest votes in the constituency with less than 3 per cent turnout. Home to an electorate of 81,879, Eidgah made a slow start with 0.8 per cent votes by 9 am, 1.3 by 11 am, 2.2 by 1 pm and 2.5 by 3 pm.

Eidgah, which is part of the separatism’s heartland and also home to one of the largest graveyards of militants, had recorded 10.85 per cent in the 2014 election. Even with the low voter turnout in Eidgah in all recent elections, the NC has consecutively retained the seat in the Assembly.