Jammu & Kashmir National Conference won the most seats in Jammu & Kashmir, even as its own president Omar Abdullah lost his family's stronghold seat of Ganderbal.¹

That left it well short of the 44-seat majority mark — a hung result.

Its nearest rival, the Indian National Congress, took 20 seats on 24.3% of the vote.

JKN won 28 of the 87 seats.

That was 32.2% of the seats on 28.2% of the vote.

On 2 August 2002 the Election Commission announced Jammu & Kashmir's 87-seat assembly election, to be held in four phases on 16 and 24 September and 1 and 8 October, amid tight security against militant threats.²

The hardline Tehreek-e-Hurriyat appealed for a boycott of the poll, while the wider All Parties Hurriyat Conference stopped short of a formal boycott call, saying only that it regarded contesting elections as closed.³

National Conference president Omar Abdullah, son of Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, contested the family's traditional stronghold seat of Ganderbal that September.¹

On 11 September, National Conference law minister and candidate Mushtaq Ahmed Lone was shot dead by suspected militants while addressing a rally in Kupwara district; independent candidate Abdur Rehman Sheikh was killed the same month.⁴

As third-phase polling opened on 1 October, militants attacked a passenger bus with grenades and gunfire at Hiranagar in the Jammu region, killing several civilians.⁵

JKN kept the most seats, but its own support caved in from the previous election.

It went from 57 seats to 28 — a collapse from its own prior result.

For the first time in the state's history, no single party could govern alone — Peoples Democratic Party and INC instead formed a coalition, with Mufti Mohammad Sayeed sworn in as chief minister.⁶

Across the state, 15 of the 62 seats that changed hands went from JKN to PDP alone.

The closest race was Nagrota, Jammu & Kashmir, decided by 67 votes — a margin, how far ahead the winner finished over whoever came second.

Khanyar, Jammu & Kashmir had the widest margin of any seat, with the winner ahead by 89.7% of the vote.

Turnout — the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot — peaked at Zanskar, Jammu & Kashmir, reaching 79.0%.

Amirakadal, Jammu & Kashmir recorded the lowest turnout of any seat, 3.1%, in an election where hardline separatists had urged a boycott of the vote.³

Jammu West, Jammu & Kashmir was the largest constituency by registered voters, with 1,63,689 names on the rolls.

The most crowded contest was Kathua, Jammu & Kashmir, where 22 candidates stood for one seat.

Jammu & Kashmir's 1987 assembly election, won by a National Conference-Congress alliance amid documented counting irregularities, is widely cited by scholars as context for the militancy that emerged in Kashmir from the late 1980s.⁷

Central rule followed after Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah's government fell in 1990; National Conference, having boycotted the 1996 general election, returned to office under Abdullah that October.⁸