Modi appoints Sinha in-charge of Kashmir
BJP LEADER TO REPLACE MURMU AS LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
India’s federal government named a former telecoms minister yesterday to lead the restive region of Kashmir, where it hopes to accelerate economic development and end years of strife.
Manoj Sinha, a leader in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party, will replace career bureaucrat G.C. Murmu as lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir, a government statement said.
The appointment came a day after authorities ensured that the first anniversary of the revocation of Kashmir’s constitutional autonomy passed off without any street protests amid heavy deployment of police and restrictions on public movement.
Last August, Modi’s government removed special privileges accorded to Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, took away its statehood and split it into two federally-administered territories by carving out Buddhist-dominated Ladakh. The move angered Kashmiris as well as Pakistan. India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
Yesterday, anti-India militants shot dead a village council head from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in Kashmir’s Kulgam district, police said. “He was shot multiple times outside his residence,” a police officer said.
Meanwhile, The UN Security Council discussed Kashmir at Pakistan’s request Wednesday for the third time since Indian government decided to end the Muslim-majority region’s semiautonomy a year ago. The UN’s most powerful body did not take any action or issue a statement after the virtual meeting behind closed doors.
Internal matter
Nonetheless, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said afterward that holding the meeting signified “that Jammu and Kashmir is an international dispute firmly on the agenda of the Security Council and has nullified, yet another time, the Indian selfserving claim that it is an `internal matter.”
On August 5, 2019, Modi’s government stripped J&K’s statehood, scrapped its separate constitution and removed inherited protections on land and jobs. India’s action and harsh security clampdown has sparked anger and economic ruin in the region. India’s new UN Ambassador T.S. Tirumurti tweeted after the meeting: “Another attempt by Pakistan fails!’’
“In today’s meeting of UN Security Council almost all countries underlined that J&K (Jammu and Kashmir) was bilateral issue & did not deserve time and attention of Council,’’ he wrote.