Mehbooba wins Anantnag by-election by over 11,000 votes

Mehbooba

Anantnag: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Saturday won the Anantnag by-election by over 11,000 votes.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti. Pic/AFP

After the seventh round of counting, Mehbooba Mufti had polled nearly 12,000 votes and Congress' Hilal Ahmad Shah had 3,700. Iftikhar Hussain Misghar of the National Conference had secured just 1,700 votes in the Anantnag constituency that was once a bastion of his party.

The vote count, which began in the morning, was briefly disrupted after Congress supporters alleged descripancies in some Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) and that bogus votes were being counted in the name of postal ballots.

However, the counting resumed immediately even as dozens of supporters of the Congress candidate shouted anti-government slogans and protested over "unsealed" postal ballots