Kavinder Gupta, the former Speaker in the Jammu-Kashmir assembly, took oath as the new deputy Chief Minister of the state on Monday as part of a reshuffle of members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders.
Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister Kavinder Gupta (Photo: IANS/File)
Kavinder Gupta took oath as the new Deputy Chief Minister of the state on Monday as ruling alliance partner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) effected a reshuffle of its members in the Mehbooba Mufti cabinet. Gupta was the Speaker of the Jammu-Kashmir assembly prior to this.
Rajeev Jasrotia, the MLA from Kathua, also took oath as a cabinet minister. Kathua has been in the news for the alleged gang-rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl. Other leaders who took oath included Sat Paul Sharma, Sunil Kumar Sharma and Shakti Parihar.
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All these leaders have been given MoS berth.
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The People’s Democratic Party (PDP), too, inducted two new faces – Pulwama MLA Mohammad Khalil Bandh and Sonawar MLA Muhammad Ashraf Mir. Both have been allocated MoS berths.
Governor NN Vohra administered the oath of office and secrecy to the new ministers
Nirmal Singh had on Sunday resigned as the deputy CM of the state. While all nine BJP ministers had resigned on 17 April to clear decks for the reshuffle, Singh had not submitted his resignation till the last moment.
He will now be made the Speaker of the J-K assembly.
BJP president Amit Shah had given the green signal to the reshuffle which came at a time when the ties between the BJP and the PDP, allies in the J-K government, are going through a testing phase over the Kathua gang-rape and murder case.
Two ministers, Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga, had resigned earlier when Mehbooba took a serious note of their participation in a meeting of the Hindu Ekta Manch and supporting the demand for a CBI probe into the rape-murder of a minor girl in Kathua district.
With two houses of legislature in J-K, the state can have 25 ministers out of which a quota of 14 has been allocated to the PDP and the remaining to the BJP.
Kavinder Gupta had in February alleged that Rohingyas had a hand in the terror attack on an army camp in Sunjuwan.
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