Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Monday resigned from the Budgam assembly seat and retained the Ganderbal seat, which is the National Conference’s (NC) bastion.
Abdullah won both the Ganderbal and Budgam seats in the recently concluded assembly polls, which took place after a decade.
Omar Abdullah, who is also the NC vice president won Ganderbal by defeating PDP‘s Bashir Ahmad Mir by over 10,000 votes.He won the Budgam seat by a margin of over 18,000 votes.
In Ganderbal, Abdullah secured 32,727 votes, winning by a margin of 10,574 against his nearest rival Mir who polled 22,153 votes.
The NC leader had won the Ganderbal seat in 2008 as well and went on to become the chief minister of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The National Conference won the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly election with 42 seats and the Congress bagged 6. Both the parties’ coalition crossed the majority mark and will form the government soon in the Union Territory.
The BJP won 29 and PDP bagged only 3 seats. In the UT election, seven independent candidates won the seats with Satesh Sharma, who left the Congress and contested as an independent from the Chhamb seat of Jammu region, winning the election by defeating BJP candidate Rajeev Sharma with a margin of 6,929 votes.
Abdullah was sworn in as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir on August 16, marking his second stint in the top post. This also marked the first elected government in the region following the abrogation of Article 370.