The BJP will replace its existing ministers on Monday for which BJP president Amit Shah has given the green signal. While all nine BJP ministers had resigned on 17 April to clear decks for the reshuffle, Nirmal Singh had so far not submitted his resignation.

The reshuffle of the ministry has been fixed for Monday noon when Governor NN Vohra will administer oath of office and secrecy to the new ministers. He might elevate some ministers of state to the cabinet rank.

Advertisement

The reshuffle is likely to be confined to the BJP as Mehbooba has not decided whether she will carry out the exercise among the ministers of PDP.

State BJP chief Sat Sharma had on 17 April obtained resignation of all nine ministers of the party to enable a reshuffle. 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.

She also complained about these ministers to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked him to drop them from her ministry. The BJP will forward the resignation letters of the nine ministers to Mehbooba today or tomorrow morning.

Moreover, the local BJP and RSS activists have been complaining to the party high command about the poor functioning of the BJP ministers who had many times caused embarrassment to the party. The BJP general secretary, Ram Madhav, had made several trips to J-K to cool down tempers of the party activists against non-performance of the ministers.

Top leaders of the state unit of BJP, including Sat Sharma, Deputy CM Nirmal Singh and organisational general secretary Ashok Koul, had been summoned to Delhi last week to discuss the reshuffle issue.

The PDP also has a vacancy in its quota of ministers following sacking of Haseeb Drabu, who was finance minister. Additional charge of his portfolio has been given to Education Minister Altaf Bukhari but holding charge of two major departments by a single minister was causing problems in both departments that require full-time ministers. However, Mehbooba has not opened her cards on whether she will induct any new minister of PDP tomorrow or not.

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.