Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah aggressively targeting the National Conference (NC) and Congress for being “pro-Pakistan”, the alliance gained a comfortable majority as the assembly results came on Tuesday in Jammu and Kashmir.

The NC President Dr. Farooq Abdullah announced that his son Omar Abdullah, who won both Ganderbal and Budgam seats, will be the next chief minister.

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This will mark the return of Omar Abdullah as chief minister after a gap of ten years. He was CM from 5 January 2009 to 8 January 2015.

These elections to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly were held after a gap of a decade and the first after the abrogation of Article 370 and downgrading of the state to a union territory.

Out of the total 90 seats, NC has won 42, BJP bagged 29, Congress got 6, PDP 3, Peoples Conference 1, CPI(M) 1, AAP 1 and independents 7.

The Lt. Governor will later nominate 5 members to the assembly.

In a related development, the BJP has reportedly dispatched its two senior leaders, Devinder Rana and Tarun Chugh to Srinagar. Their mission to the valley is not yet known but Rana was a right hand man of Omar Abdullah before he quit the NC and joined BJP.

The NC has once again proved that they continue to be reckoning in Jammu and Kashmir politics despite the BJP’s aggressive attack on dynasty politics in the union territory. The top BJP leadership had campaigned that terrorism will return to J&K if people voted for NC and Congress.

In a major blow to the BJP, its UT President Ravinder Raina was defeated in the border constituency of Nowshera in the Rajouri district by NC’s Surinder Choudhary with an impressive margin of 7819 votes. He has reportedly resigned from his post after his defeat.

Congress President Tariq Hameed Karra and former PCC chiefs GA Mir and Peerzada Mohammad Sayeed were among the six candidates of the party who won.

Devinder Rana, who contested on BJP ticket, has won his traditional Nagrota seat with the highest margin of 30,472 votes.

The PDP also suffered a shock with the defeat of Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter Iltija Mufti in a triangular contest in her family’s Bijbehara seat. However, the party managed to win three seats in the valley, Kupwara, Tral and Pulwama.

These results indicate a stark political divide between the Kashmir and Jammu regions, with NC and Congress sweeping the Kashmir valley, while BJP continues to proclaim its strength in the Jammu region.

The BJP, which had put up 13 candidates in the valley and 43 in Jammu, has consolidated its position to 29 seats. Its vote share so far is the highest at 25.64 per cent, as per the Election Commission of India data. In the last election in 2014, it had won 25 seats.

The vote share of NC was 23.43%, Congress 11.97% and PDP 8.87%.

Peoples Conference chief, Sajad Lone, who was a minister in the last PDP-BJP coalition government from the latter’s quota and contested from two seats in this election, won north Kashmir’s Handwara seat with a thin margin of 662 votes. But he lost the Kupwara seat from PDP’s Mir Mohammad Fayaz with a margin of 20,316 votes.

Not even a single candidate of Altaf Bukhari’s Apni Party and Ghulam Nabi Azad’s DPAP, which are identified as B-teams of BJP, could win any seat. Bukhari himself lost the Channpora seat to NC’s Mushtaq Guroo.

Although the BJP was reportedly pinning hopes on them, but remarkably, except the bailed out MP Engineer Rashid’s brother Khursheed Ahmad Sheikh winning the Langate seat, none of the banned Jamaat-e-Islami sponsored candidates could register a win.

CPI(M) leader, Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami was leading with 7838 votes over a Jamaat sponsored candidate Sayar Ahmad Reshi in south Kashmir’s Kulgam.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for the first time opened its account with Mehraj Malik winning the Doda seat where among others, he defeated two former ministers Abdul Majid Wani and Khalid Najib Suhrawardy. Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal congratulated him on phone.

A former deputy chief minister and recipient of Padam Shree from the Modi government, Muzaffar Hussain Baig, who contested the polls independently, badly lost and came at third place in Baramulla.

Tara Chand, a former deputy chief minister and Congress candidate, also fared badly by coming on the third place in the border Chhamb constituency of Jammu. The former Congress chief Vikar Rasool Wani also got third place in Banihal.