22 ministers sworn in too, 16 in Cabinet
Mehbooba Mufti, the charismatic leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, on Monday became the first woman chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir. She was sworn in nearly three months after her father, chief minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, died in a Delhi hospital on January 7.
Ms Mufti, who will be 57 next month, took the oath in the name of God in Urdu, the state’s official language, in a simple function at the Jammu Raj Bhavan, with the oath of office and secrecy administered by governor N.N. Vohra. Ms Mufti will head a PDP-BJP coalition in the state for almost five years as a little more than a year of the six-year term of the Assembly elected in November-December 2014 is already complete.
She is J&K’s 13th chief minister and the second woman Muslim CM in the country after Syeda Anwara Taimur, who became Assam CM in December 1980. She is also the fifth woman CM in the country now, the others being J. Jayalalithaa (Tamil Nadu), Anandiben Patel (Gujarat), Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan) and Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal).
Twenty-two other ministers, including 16 of Cabinet rank, also took the oath on Monday in a brief ceremony. The Cabinet ministers are the PDP’s Abdul Rehman Butt Veeri, Ghulam Nabi Lone “Hanjoora”, Abdul Haq Khan, Syed Basharat Bukhari, Haseeb A. Drabu, Chaudhary Zulfikar Ali, Syed Naeem Akhtar and Moulvi Imran Raza Ansari; and the BJP’s Dr Nirmal Singh, Chander Prakash, Bali Bhagat, Chaudhary Lal Singh, Sajad Gani Lone, Shayam Lal Chaudhary and Abdul Gani Kohli.
Dr Nirmal Singh will be deputy chief minister, the post he also held in the Mufti Sayeed government. Sajad Lone has been made a minister again under the BJP quota.
With an elected government taking office, the three-month-long period of Governor’s Rule ended in the state. Mr Vohra issued a proclamation on Monday revoking the earlier one issued on January 9 bringing the state under Governor’s Rule.
All the members of the council of ministers took the oath under J&K’s own constitution as is mandatory under the law. Ten ministers, including the CM, took the oath in Urdu, seven in Hindi, four in English and one each in Kashmiri and Dogri.
The PDP’s Syed Altaf Bukhari and Javed Mustafa Mir, who were Cabinet ministers in the Mufti government, and two former ministers of state, Abdul Majeed Padder and Muhammad Ashraf Mir, were dropped reportedly for their “dissident” activities and “poor performance”. There is likely to be no change in portfolios worked out by the two parties in 2015. Under the agreement, portfolios like home, finance, revenue, law and justice and education will remain with the PDP, while the BJP will keep health, urban development, power, commerce and industries and public health engineering.
The swearing-in ceremony was attended by senior BJP leaders, including Union ministers M. Venkaiah Naidu, Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Jitendra Singh, BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav and former J&K chief ministers Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar Abdullah, besides a host of dignitaries from various walks of life.
The Union ministers, who were special invitees at the ceremony, arrived late, after Ms Mufti and her deputy Nirmal Singh had completed taking the oath.
Ms Mufti’s mother Gulshan Ara Nazir, daughters Iltija and Irtiqa and siblings Tassaduq Sayeed, Mahmooda Sayeed and Rubaiya Sayeed and some other Mufti family members and friends were present. However, senior Congress leaders invited to the ceremony did not turn up.
Later, speaking at her first Cabinet meeting, Ms Mufti warned that the two vacant positions in her Cabinet could become five if the ministers did not perform. She said she would have “zero tolerance” towards corruption, asserting she will not spare any of her ministers even if she gets a minor complaint against him or her. She reiterated that her government would work to realise her father’s dream of J&K’s inclusive development.
Ms Mufti, who is a PDP Lok Sabha MP from Anantnag, has six months in which she will have to be elected as an MLA or MLC. She is likely to contest from the Anantnag Assembly seat that fell vacant after the death of her father.
