1972 Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly election

1972 Jammu and Kashmir state assembly elections

17 June 1972
all 75 seats in Legislative Assembly 38 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	60.5%
First party Second party   Party INC Jamaat-e-Islami Last election 61 Seats won 58 5 Seat change 3   Third party   Party ABJS Last election 3 Seats won 3 Seat change 0
Chief Minister before election Ghulam Mohammed Sadiq INC Elected Chief Minister Syed Mir Qasim INC

Elections for the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir were held over January 1972. Syed Mir Qasim was appointed Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. For the first time, women entered the Jammu and Kashmir assembly in the 1972 assembly elections. That year, ten women filed their nominations, six of them contested and four won. This made the percentage of women legislators 5.33% in the Jammu Kashmir assembly.

Aftermath

In 1971 an insurrection broke out in erstwhile East Pakistan, and subsequently war broke out between India and Pakistan which ended in the creation of Bangladesh. Sheikh Abdullah, watching the alarming turn of events in the subcontinent, realized that for the survival of this region there was an urgent need to stop pursuing confrontational politics and promoting the solution of issues by a process of reconciliation and dialogue rather than confrontation. Critics of the sheikh hold the view that he sold the goal of a plebiscite for gaining the chief minister's chair. He started talks with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for normalizing the situation in the region and came to an accord called 1974 Indira-Sheikh accord by giving up the demand for a plebiscite instead of the people being given the right to self-rule by a democratically elected government (as envisaged under article 370 of the Constitution of India) rather than the puppet government which till then ruled. Syed Mir Qasim most famously offered to resign from the office of the chief minister to encourage and institutionalize the landmark 1974 Indira-Sheikh accord in 1975.