New Delhi, Oct 21 (IANS): Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Monday announced that he is vacating the Budgam Assembly seat and retaining the Ganderbal constituency.

"I’m eternally grateful to the people of Budgam for voting for me. I’m sorry the rules dictated that I had to vacate one of the two seats. I promise the voters of Budgam that I will always consider myself their representative & will work for them over the next five years to resolve their problems to the best extent possible," the Chief Minister wrote on X

Earlier, Pro-tem Speaker, Mubarak Gul, a former Speaker of the Assembly, told the house that Omar Abdullah has resigned as Budgam MLA and has decided to represent the Ganderbal constituency in the Assembly.

Omar Abdullah fought the Assembly elections from Budgam and Ganderbal and won from both places. In the former, he had defeated Aga Syed Muntazir Mehdi of the PDP by nearly 19,000 votes, while defeating the same party's Bashir Ahmad Mir by over 10,000 voters in the latter.

On Monday afternoon, the Pro-tem Speaker also administered the oath/affirmation to newly-elected MLAs.

The first to be administered the oath was Chief Minister and the Leader of the House, Omar Abdullah. He took his oath in Kashmiri, surprising his detractors, who often said that the language was unknown to him.

Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Kumar Choudhary, who represents Nowshera in the Jammu region, took the oath in English.

The oath-taking ceremony of the MLAs marks an end to the six-year period when J&K didn’t have an Assembly.

The NC has 42 members and is supported by six members of the Congress, one each of the CPI-M and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and 6 Independent MLAs. This makes a total of 56 MLA.s while the simple majority even out of a 95-member Assembly (90 elected plus 5 nominated) would be 48 only.

However, the NC's strength will now drop to 41 on Omar Abdullah quitting the Budgam seat.