The political parties including the People's Democratic Party, the National Conference, and the Congress had opposed this order.
Omar Abdullah lost by 204,142 votes; Mehbooba Mufti by 281, 794 votes.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation at 8 pm on Thursday in an apparent outreach to people of Kashmir after the recent measures taken by his government in Jammu and Kashmir. Modi's address comes two days after the Parliament passed a resolution repealing the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and a Bill reorganising the state into two Union Territories -- Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
India has registered a strong protest with the United Kingdom over the visit to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) by its High Commissioner to Islamabad along with another British official.
'Omar Abdullah presented Delhi as a villain in front of the people of Jammu Kashmir before elections and now is shaking hands with them.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday appointed election in-charges and co-in-charges for 23 states and Union territories in view of the Lok Sabha polls this year.
Modi is scheduled to visit Palli village of Samba on National Panchayati Raj Day on April 24.
The new Vande Bharat Express train is specially designed to operate seamlessly in Jammu & Kashmir's challenging winter conditions for the upcoming Katra-Srinagar rail route.
Rajiv Kumar, the 25th chief election commissioner of India, has demitted office after a nearly three-year tenure marked by both electoral successes and allegations of bias from opposition parties. Kumar oversaw the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the Jammu and Kashmir assembly polls, among other major elections. During his tenure, he implemented reforms across various aspects of the Election Commission's functioning, including structural, technological, capacity development, communication, international cooperation, and administration. However, he faced criticism from opposition parties and activists on several issues, including the efficacy of Electronic Voting Machines, alleged fudging of voter data, and being "lenient" on the ruling BJP. While the Commission responded to the allegations, Kumar often defended himself and the poll authority through poetry. In his farewell address, Kumar expressed concerns about the timing of petitions raising doubts over poll processes and the impact of freebie promises on the fiscal health of the state. He also criticized the practice of showing early trends on counting day by news channels, calling it "nonsense". Kumar's tenure was marked by numerous controversies, with opposition parties and activists alleging bias and irregularities. While the Election Commission defended its actions, the allegations cast a shadow over his time in office.
The vote value of an MLA is calculated on the basis of the total population of the state, based on the 1971 census.
The Indian government has scrapped the 'no-detention policy' for classes 5 and 8 in schools it governs. This means that students in these classes who do not pass the year-end exams will be allowed to fail. The decision comes after the amendment to the Right to Education Act (RTE) in 2019, which has already led to 18 states and union territories doing away with the 'no-detention policy' for the two classes. The new policy will be implemented in over 3,000 schools run by the central government, including Kendriya Vidyalayas, Navaodyala Vidyalayas, and Sainik Schools.
Besides the bills, the government has listed the first batch of supplementary demands for grants for 2023-24 for presentation, discussion and voting during the session.
Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir will be held in three phases from September 18 while Haryana will go to polls in a single phase on October 1, the Election Commission announced on Friday.
The indication of a timeline comes two days after the Election Commission initiated the revision of electoral rolls in the union territory and prepare the draft rolls by August 31.
According to an official release, the voting percentage is likely to go up when reports from all polling stations are obtained, as polling was scheduled until 6 pm in many constituencies.
The National Investigation Agency has charge sheeted Dilawar Iqbal -- a right-hand man of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar Alvi -- and Kupwara-resident Mohammed Ubaid Malik for allegedly conspiring to disturb the peace and communal harmony of Jammu and Kashmir by attacking security forces, officials said on Wednesday.
The Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh are and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India, the MEA said.
The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the government's decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution, which bestowed a special status on the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, and said steps should be taken to conduct the election to the Assembly in the Union Territory by September 30 next year.
"The prime minister asked them to deploy the full spectrum of our counter-terror capabilities," an official source said.
Several states have been reporting an uptick in the number of COVID cases over the last few weeks and nine states and Union territories have so far detected the presence of the JN.1 sub-variant of the virus.
Will Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, who gets his orders from New Delhi, call the shots or allow a democratically elected government to independently govern, questions Ramesh Menon.
Karra, who became the J&K Congress chief last Friday replacing Vikar Rasool Wani, said a call is already there for all secular parties who are opposed to the "hegemonic attitude" of the BJP to unite.
Bharatiya Janata Party national general secretary Ram Madhav on Wednesday accused the National Conference and the People's Democratic Party of taking support from ex-militants for the assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir, and said the two parties want to take the Union territory back to its 'trouble-filled days'.
He will succeed incumbent Rajiv Gauba, who completes his unprecedented five-year term in the top bureaucratic post this month-end.
Over 2.5 million voters will decide the fate of 239 candidates in the fray for 26 Jammu and Kashmir assembly seats in the second phase of the election to be held in the Union territory on Wednesday.
US noted that India has described the actions in J&K as "strictly an internal matter".
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday termed misleading claims by opposition leaders that if any state is not named in the Budget speech, then it does not get any budgetary allocation. Replying to a Budget discussion in the Lok Sabha, Sitharaman asserted that no state was being denied money. She recalled that in the past Budgets by the UPA government also did not mention names of all states in their Budget speech.
The last assembly elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir in 2014, five years before the erstwhile state was reorganised into two Union territories on August 5, 2019.
In his first visit to the valley after becoming the prime minister for the third consecutive term, Modi emphasised the importance of enabling the people of Jammu and Kashmir to elect their representatives for the assembly.
After inaugurating development projects worth nearly Rs 5,000 crore for boosting the agri-economy in the Union territory, Modi said he was "elated to be among the wonderful people of Srinagar".
Two more Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, including a district president, submitted their resignations from the primary membership of the party on Saturday, citing their resentment against the choice of candidates in their constituencies for the assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir.
The attack, which claimed the lives of seven individuals, including a local doctor and two labourers from Bihar, has raised concerns about the unreported trend of local youths joining terrorist groups in Kashmir during this period.
>The Indian Army still uses old British-era names and recruits soldiers based on caste or region, which hurts national unity, argues Colonel K Thammayya Udupa (retd).
With no agenda announced for the meeting, the leaders from Jammu and Kashmir said they have come with an open mind.
"We hope that the parties involved will not allow a new aggravation of the situation in the region as a result of the decisions."
The IMD has warned of heatwave to severe heatwave conditions in parts of West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh during the next five days.
More than 40 per cent of the 908 candidates contesting the assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir are Independents, leading to claims that a large number of them have been propped up by the Bharatiya Janata Party to divide votes.
The leaders said the list of seats each party will be contesting, as well as the names of the candidates, will be issued later.
Ahead of counting of votes, National Conference president Farooq Abdullah on Monday said his party was open to the idea of taking support of Mehbooba Mufti's People's Democratic Party to form government in the Union territory.
The former Congress president is currently on a tour of Ladakh -- his first since the region was made a Union territory after being carved out of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019 -- and is likely to visit Kargil next week.
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