J&K cabinet rejig in offing? BJP tells ministers to quit

Jammu and Kashmir appeared headed for a Cabinet reshuffle, with the Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday asking its ministers in the ruling coalition with the Peoples Democratic Party to submit their resignations.

A BJP office-bearer in New Delhi said the resignations from the Mehbooba Mufti-led government would lay the groundwork for the long-pending reshuffle. “There is no threat to the coalition government,” the BJP leader said on condition of anonymity.

He said a decision on the resignations was taken last week, when the party’s general secretary and key interlocutor with the PDP, Ram Madhav, travelled to the state at the peak of a controversy following the rape and murder of an eight-year-old in Jammu’s Kathua.

BJP’s leaders in the state, however, did not confirm the development. Mehbooba has already accepted the resignations of two BJP ministers who had participated in a rally in support of the people arrested in connection with the rape-murder. With the resignations, the number of ministers in the state government came down to 22, including nine from the BJP.

The Kathua incident has again strained ties between the BJP and PDP, which lost some of its sheen in Kashmir after forming a governing alliance with the saffron party in 2015.

The Jammu and Kashmir CM told the BJP that for the coalition to survive, the two ministers would have to quit, a close aide to Mehbooba said last week.

The state unit of the BJP was unhappy about the resignations, but had to comply with a directive straight from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said a party leader. One of the complaints of the state unit was that Mehbooba had not acted on the Cabinet reshuffle despite the BJP pressing for it.

The council of ministers in the state has three vacancies; the PDP had last month removed its finance minister Haseeb Drabu after a controversial remark that Kashmir was not a political issue.

THE BJP MADE IT CLEAR THAT THERE WAS NO THREAT TO THE COALITION GOVT IN THE STATE