Having submitted their resignations ahead of a rejig of the cabinet, the BJP legislators are engaged in hectic lobbying for a ministerial berth in Jammu and Kashmir.
The BJP high command had last week asked all ministers of the party in the cabinet of Mehbooba Mufti to submit their resignation to the state party chief Sat Sharma so as to enable change of the BJP faces in the ministry.
The exercise has been necessitated following resignation of two ministers, Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga, after they attended a rally of the Hindu Ekta Manch and supported the demand for transferring investigation to the CBI into the alleged rape-murder of a minor girl in the Kathua district.
Moreover, the BJP high command had for past some time been receiving complaints of most ministers of the party having become non-functional and having failed to take care of the interests of the constituencies from where they had won the Assembly elections.
There were reports that several BJP legislators have rushed to Delhi or were pursuing their case for ministerial berth with the RSS functionaries. None of the eight BJP ministers, except the deputy chief minister Nirmal Singh, was attending the secretariat after submitting their resignation.
To save its alliance with the PDP, the BJP leadership had agreed to Mehbooba’s demand for dropping the two ministers who were in the eye of a storm after having supported the demand for a CBI probe. Mehbooba herself spoke to Prime Minister Narendera Modi on the issue and urged him to drop Lal Singh and Ganga from her ministry.
Jammu and Kashmir has two houses of the legislature and as such several MLAs and MLCs of the BJP were vying for ministerial berths as the party high command was expected to introduce new faces in a bid to refurbish the party’s image in Jammu where for the first time in the last Assembly elections the BJP won 25 seats.
However, the BJP leadership was worried over the sharp decline in the party’s graph as most of its ministers in J-K had failed to take care of their respective constituencies.