Omar Abdullah retains Ganderbal, gives up Budgam

SRINAGAR: J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah has retained Ganderbal seat and resigned from Budgam after having won from both in the recent assembly polls. Protem Speaker Mubarak Gul made the announcement Monday while administering oaths to the 90 newly elected MLAs , including Omar.

Sources Omar’s move to give up Budgam would necessitate a bypoll, with Omar’s National Conference (NC) likely to field a fresh candidate.

Omar was the first to be administered the oath and he went through the motions in Kashmiri. Son of NC president Farooq Abdullah and his British wife Mollie, Omar had often faced criticism earlier for not being able to speak his native language. Deputy CM and Omar’s NC colleague Surinder Kumar Choudhary took his oath in English.

While the third-generation politician from the Abdullah family is fluent in English, 54-year-old Omar’s proficiency in Hindi, Urdu and Kashmiri was poor at the start of his political career in late 1990s. However, during his first stint as CM from 2009 to 2014, NC vice-president Omar took lessons to bone up on the three languages.

Monday’s oaths capped a six-year hiatus as the previous J&K assembly folded up in 2018 with the collapse of the PDP-BJP coalition govt. This time, there are 51 first-timers, including BJP’s Kishtwar MLA Shagun Parihar, who is the youngest member at 29. The NC veteran Chrar-e-Sharief MLA Abdul Rahim Rather is the oldest at 80.

Rather and his NC colleague Ali Mohammad Sagar (Khanyar) have been elected a record seven times. While Sagar started in 1983, Rather began his stints in 1977. However, Rather, a former finance minister, lost the 2014 polls.

This time, NC emerged the single largest party in the September-October polls with 42 seats. The governing party is backed by Congress -- which won six seats -- five independent MLAs, one MLA each from AAP and CPM. BJP bagged 29 seats, its best-ever J-K poll score, to become the second-largest party.

(With agency inputs)