After the National Conference and its ally Congress passed the halfway point in the election results on Tuesday, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah said that his son Omar will succeed him as chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.
Speaking to the media, Farooq Abdullah said, “People have given their mandate. They have proven that they don’t accept the decision that was taken on August 5 (abrogation of Article 370). Omar Abdullah will be the chief minister.”
The National Conference was leading on 34 seats and had gained seven constituencies at the time this report was filed. In the 90-member Jammu and Kashmir Assembly, the party is comfortably ahead of the halfway point of 46 seats thanks to its ally Congress, which is leading on six seats.
Omar Abdullah ran for two seats – Budgam and Ganderbal. While Omar won the Budgam seat by 18,485 votes, he leads Ganderbal by 9,766 votes after 15 rounds of counting.
After early trends indicated that the National Conference-Congress alliance was leading, Omar Abdullah criticized exit polls that predicted a hung assembly in the Union Territory.
“If you pay for exit polls or waste time discussing them, you deserve all the jokes/memes/ridicule. There was a reason I called them a waste of time a few days ago,” Omar Abdullah tweeted.
The former Chief Minister had contested the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year from Baramulla seat, where he was defeated by Independent candidate Sheikh Abdul Rashid, popularly known as Engineer Rashid.
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Source: India Today
