1996 Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly election

The National Conference, which had boycotted the 1996 Indian general election, agreed to participate in the 1996 Assembly elections only after Prime Minister, H. D. Deve Gowda, promised "maximum autonomy" for Jammu and Kashmir.^[6]

Party		Votes	%	Seats	+/–
	Jammu & Kashmir National Conference	863,612	34.78	57	17
	Indian National Congress	496,628	20.00	7	19
	Bharatiya Janata Party	301,238	12.13	8	6
	Janata Dal	269,984	10.87	5	New
	Bahujan Samaj Party	159,690	6.43	4	New
	Jammu and Kashmir Awami League	60,437	2.43	1	New
	Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party	55,885	2.25	1	1
	Communist Party of India (Marxist)	23,774	0.96	1	1
	All India Indira Congress (Tiwari)	17,473	0.70	1	New
	Others	3,090	0.12	0	0
	Independents	231,111	9.31	2	6
Total		2,482,922	100.00	87	11
Valid votes		2,482,922	96.74
Invalid/blank votes		83,734	3.26
Total votes		2,566,656	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		4,761,095	53.91
Source: ECI[7]

In the 1996 assembly elections, 14 women contested, 10 of whom lost their deposits, while 2 were elected.^[8] National Conference won 57 out of 86 seats.^[9][10] BSP contested first time on 29 seats in the state and won 4 seats.^[1] BJP rose from two seats in 1987 to 8 seats in 1996.^[11]