Mehbooba Mufti To Meet Governor With BJP To Stake Claim To Form Government

The PDP and the BJP will together call on Jammu and Kashmir Governor NN Vohra today and stake claim to form the new government to be headed by Mehbooba Mufti, sources have said. Ms Mufti will be the first woman Chief Minister of the state.
   
A day after the PDP legislature party elected her its leader and named her the party chief ministerial candidate, BJP legislators in Jammu yesterday elected Nirmal Singh as its leader. He will again be the Deputy Chief Minister in the new cabinet, a post he had under Mufti Mohammed Sayeed who died in January.

At the meeting, the BJP had also announced its backing for a PDP-BJP government led by Ms Mufti. BJP general secretary Ram Madhav was also present during the meeting.

The state has been under Governor's Rule since early January. The impasse in the government formation in the state was finally resolved earlier this week following Ms Mufti's meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The PDP chief had refused to succeed her father as the chief minister, demanding that the BJP honour the conditions laid down in the Agenda of Alliance, a blueprint crafted when the two parties decided on co-governing the state. But her party suggested that the BJP was not delivering on the commitments required from the Union government.

While the BJP refused to give anything in writing, senior leaders, including finance minister Arun Jaitley, provided repeated assurances that the Centre's promises to Jammu and Kashmir will be kept.

On Wednesday, after a 25-minute meeting with the Prime Minister, Ms Mufti said, "When you meet the Prime Minister then the ways of sorting out problems becomes more clear."