Mufti Sayeed Takes Oath as Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir

mangaloretoday.com/ NDTV

Srinagar, March 1:  Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, 79, the veteran leader of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has taken oath as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, bringing to an end the 49-day Governor’s rule in the state. He is leading a historic alliance with the BJP, which will be part of a government in the state for the first time.

 

Here are the latest developments

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with BJP chief Amit Shah and several union ministers are attending the ceremony, which is taking place at Jammu University’s General Zorawar Singh Auditorium.

A 25-member cabinet is also expected to take oath, BJP’s Nirmal Singh is to be the state’s Deputy Chief Minister.

The other faces in the cabinet are expected to be PDP leaders Haseeb Drabu, Abdul Rehman Veeri and Naeem Akhtar and BJP’s Kavinder Gupta and Bali Bhagat.

This is Mr Sayeed’s second stint as Chief Minister. He held the post between 2002 and 2005 in a rotational arrangement with then ally Congress.

Post-noon, the two parties are also expected to release the much-awaited Common Minimum Programme (CMP) on the basis of which they will govern the state.

The two parties, ideological opposites, have spent the last two months in attempts to bridge huge differences that have divided them for decades, which will be reflected in the CMP.

The document is expected to clarify the stand of the two parties over contentious issues like Article 370, which gives special constitutional status to the state, and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act or AFSPA, which gives the Army the authority to make arrests without warrants.

There is uncertainty over whether separatist-turned-politician and People’s Conference leader Sajjad Lone will join the government.

The PDP leader has dubbed the coalition -- which both sides had been arduously working towards for the last two months -- as a "bringing together of North Pole with South Pole".

In the December elections, J&K voted in a hung assembly. The PDP was the single largest party with 28 MLAs; the BJP was number 2 with 25. Together, they have an easy majority in the 87-member assembly.