Omar Abdullah Steps Down From Budgam Seat, Retains Ganderbal In Assembly

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah resigned from the Budgam assembly seat and retained the Ganderbal constituency, the National Conference’s (NC) bastion, Pro-tem speaker Mubarak Gul announced in the House on Monday.

Poonch National Conference MLA Ajaz Jan also confirmed it.

Abdullah had won both the Budgam and Ganderbal seats in the recently held assembly polls. He won the Budgam seat by a margin of 18,485 votes against Peoples Democratic Party’s Aga Syed Muntazir Mehdi. While in Ganderbal, he defeated PDP’s Bashir Ahmed Mir by 10,574 votes.

Omar Abdullah was an MLA from Ganderbal from 2009 to 2014 during his first stint as chief minister. The constituency has been represented by his father Farooq Abdullah and grandfather Sheikh Abdullah, who founded the National Conference.

Omar Abdullah, who took oath as Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister last Wednesday, started his innings with a people-friendly gesture and conveyed that he has told the police not to have a “green corridor” or traffic stoppage during his movement by road, and effort should be to cause minimum inconvenience to people.

The National Conference leader was administered the oath of office and secrecy by the LG Manoj Sinha at the Sher-i-Kashmir International Conference Centre (SKICC) in Srinagar.

Surinder Kumar, MLA from Nowshera in Jammu, was sworn in as the Deputy Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir along with other ministers.

After taking the oath, Omar Abdullah received a guard of honour at the Civil Secretariat in Srinagar and held his first maiden meeting with secretaries of various departments.

Omar Abdullah, who is heading the National Conference-led government in the state, has the backing of other parties in the INDIA alliance and four independents. The NC-Congress alliance won a majority in the assembly polls.

Omar Abdullah had earlier served as Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir from 2009 and 2015.

The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC)-Congress alliance won a majority in the assembly polls. NC won 42 seats while the Congress, its ally in the INDIA bloc, could only win 6 seats.

The BJP put up an impressive performance bagging 29 seats. Peoples’ Democratic Party won three seats and one seat each was won by the People’s Conference, CPI-M and AAP. Seven seats were won by the Independents.

The results of the three-phased elections in Jammu and Kashmir were declared on October 8. This was the first election in Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019.