Srinagar, October 31
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah will contest Assembly elections from Sonawar and Beerwah instead of seeking re-election from the Abdullah’s bastion Ganderbal.

The National Conference (NC) today announced its fourth list of 22 candidates for the Assembly elections. The NC said Omar would contest from Sonawar in Srinagar district and Beerwah in Budgam district. Parts of both these constituencies were affected by devastating floods last month.

Polling in Beerwah will be held in the third phase on December 9 and Sonawar will go to polls on December 14. Omar, his father Farooq Abdullah and sister are registered voters from Sonawar. The constituency has been represented by NC legislators since it first went to polls in 1996.

It will be for the first time in 37 years that no member of the Abdullah family will contest from Ganderbal, which has long been considered a bastion of the Abdullahs. The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) gained a commanding lead in the recent Lok Sabha elections from Ganderbal.

Omar’s grandfather Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah contested from Ganderbal in 1977 when he entered the mainstream politics after remaining incarcerated for 22 years. He was elected to the Assembly and became the CM for the first time. Ganderbal was also Omar’s father Farooq Abdullah’s constituency in 1983, 1987 and 1996.

Omar, who is a sitting MLA from Ganderbal, made his first attempt to enter the Assembly in 2002 when he lost this constituency to the PDP candidate before making a comeback in 2008. Sonwar and Beerwah witnessed a tough contest between the NC and the PDP in the 2008 polls. In Sonwar, Farooq had defeated PDP candidate Ghulam Qadir Pardesi by 94 votes while the NC candidate had lost the Beerwah constituency to PDP’s Shafi Ahmad Wani by 164 votes.