Lok Sabha elections 2024: ECI's responsibility to ensure counting of votes take place properly, says Farooq Abdullah

Farooq Abdullah. File pic

Amid ongoing Lok Sabha elections 2024, Jammu and Kashmir National Conference President Farooq Abdullah on Tuesday said that it is the responsibility of the Election Commission of India to ensure that vote counting on June 4 takes place in a proper manner.

"It is the responsibility of the Election Commission that the counting of the votes take place properly and come in front of the people of the counrty," Farooq Abdullah told reporters.

He also said that "the BJP always has a problem with the National Conference because they are always standing for the people here".

Meanwhile, JKNC Vice President Omar Abdullah said that if allegations related to voters being lured turn out to be true then a proof before the poll body has to be presented.

"If voters are being lured by giving them money and they are being prepared to vote, then we will have to present this proof before the Election Commission. I will go to Srinagar and find out how much truth is there in this. If there is truth in this, then we will definitely demand action in this," he said.

Earlier today, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti said that the record turnout witnessed in the Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency indicated that people of the Jammu and Kashmir wanted to send a message to the government at Centre in Delhi.

"Polling which was held for (Srinagar parliamentary constituency) on Monday was very good as people could not exercise their democratic right to vote in the last five years. People wanted to send a message to Delhi (government at the Centre). The decisions you took following the abrogation of article 370 related to their land, state subjects and jobs were not accepted to them," Mufti told reporters here.

The Srinagar constituency, which saw the first general election after the abrogation of Article 370 in J-K, recorded 38.49 per cent voting, according to the Information and PR Department, Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. This is the highest voter turnout in several decades.

The voter turnout in Srinagar was 40.94 per cent in 1996, 30.06 per cent in 1998, 11.93 per cent in 1999, 18.57 per cent in 2004, 25.55 per cent in 2009, 25.86 per cent in 2014 and 14.43 per cent in 2019.

The erstwhile state has been under central rule since the fall of the PDP-BJP government in June 2018, with the last assembly polls held in 2014. The voting in Jammu and Kashmir is being held in five phases of Lok Sabha elections 2024.

(With inputs from ANI)