Jammu & Kashmir Election 2024: Congress-NC Leads with 25 Seats, BJP at 19

SRINAGAR: Counting of votes for the 90 assembly seats of Jammu and Kashmir started at 8 am today. The last leg in the election process will bring to the state for the first time in six years an elected government, since the PDP-BJP government had collapsed in June 2018 followed by the annulment of Article 370. A party needs 46 seats to form a majority.

For the first time since 2014, the state of Jammu and Kashmir experienced assembly elections conducted in three phases.

The first phase covering 24 seats took place on September 18, while the second phase with 26 seats was held on September 25; finally the remaining 40 seats were concluded in the final phase on October 1.

The Congress-NC alliance is ahead in 24 seats, while the BJP is ahead in 19 seats, according to early trends.

Vote counting for the 90-seat Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly began on Tuesday morning at 20 counting centers spread across the region's districts under tight security with armed guards and CCTV monitoring.

The Election Commission has begun the count for the 90 assembly seats in Jammu and Kashmir, starting with the postal ballots.

Major contestants of this much-awaited election are the alliance of the CongressNational Conference, People's Democratic Party (PDP), and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This election is taking place five years after Jammu and Kashmir was split into two union territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Exit polls released Saturday show NC-Congress alliance in the lead; regional party to sail with the most seats. The BJP is likely to marginally better than what it achieved in 2014 when it had bagged 25 seats; the PDP, which had won 28 back then, is expected to get less than 10 this time.

The People's Conference, Apni Party, Democratic Azad Party led by Ghulam Nabi Azad, and the Awami Ittehad Party are unlikely to bag significant gains as per the exit polls. In addition to Independents, it is likely that these parties will win a total of approximately 10 seats.

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