Union home minister Rajnath Singh had on Friday literally predicted a 90 per cent turnout in the Kashmir municipal polls that began on Monday. He was bang on as far as the numbers go, only that more than 90 per cent of voters stayed away.

People overwhelmingly boycotted the first of the four phases of the urban body polls in Kashmir, although massive participation in Jammu and Ladakh pushed up the turnout for the state to 57 per cent.

An official said the Valley clocked an abysmal voter turnout of 8.3 per cent, a shade more than the 7 per cent registered in the Srinagar parliamentary bypoll in 2017.

An official said only 7,057 of the 84,692 eligible voters turned up at the booths in the Valley on Monday.

Of the 30,074 voters in three wards of the Srinagar Municipal Corporation, 1,862, or 6 per cent, turned up at the heavily fortified polling stations.

The four wards of Anantnag recorded a turnout of 7.3 per cent. The 15 wards of Baramulla clocked 5.7 per cent. Bandipora recorded the lowest turnout of 3.3 per cent.

The only voters in some wards, like Khoja Sahab and Baghe Islam, were the solitary candidates themselves.

Apparently embarrassed by the low turnout in Kashmir, the state’s chief electoral officer, Shaleen Kabra, did not hold a media briefing after the voting, breaking an age-old tradition.

Late in the day, Kabra issued an order bringing ahead the start of voting for the October 10 second phase from 7am to 6am. This was seen as a strategy to help people wary of the boycott call by separatists to come out to vote as it remains dark at that hour in Kashmir.

The poor turnout in the Valley is the second major blow to the administration of new governor Satya Pal Malik, which decided to go ahead with the elections despite the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party choosing to abstain.

The administration had faced its first setback when a large number of wards went uncontested in the Valley. No candidate came forward to file nominations in 177 of Kashmir’s 598 wards, while another 215 wards had only one person in the fray, ensuring that they won unopposed.

The municipal polls have been nothing like Kashmir had seen before. A veil of secrecy enveloped the elections, with people in most wards not even knowing the contestants. The chief electoral officer’s office did not release the names of the candidates in most wards possibly to protect their lives. Perhaps no candidate campaigned.

A spokesperson for the chief electoral officer’s office said Kashmir had polled 18.3 per cent votes, but he had clubbing the turnout in Kargil and Leh, which recorded figures of 78 and 52 per cent, respectively.

On Friday, Rajnath had blamed Pakistan for the trouble in Kashmir, averring that 90 per cent people were keen to participate in the municipal polls.