DP chief Mufti Mohammad Sayeed took oath as chief minister of Jammu and
Kashmir Sunday, heading a coalition that brought the BJP to power for
the first time in India's only Muslim-majority state.
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and party leaders L.K.
Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi witnessed the ceremony, more than two
months after elections produced a hung verdict giving the PDP and the
BJP 28 and 25 seats respectively.
After taking oath, Sayeed, 79,
warmly hugged Modi and sat close to him, witnessing the entire ceremony
held on a flower-decked stage at the Jammu University's General Zorawar
Singh auditorium.
Son of a religious preacher from the Kashmir
Valley, Sayeed will head the government of his Peoples Democratic Party
and the Bharatiya Janata Party, and will be the chief minister for all
of six years.
Senior BJP leader Nirmal Singh was sworn in as the deputy chief minister.
Former
separatist leader Sajad Gani Lone took oath as a BJP ally, and then
warmly hugged both Modi and Sayeed, triggering thunderous applause.
His inclusion in the cabinet followed a last-minute hitch, a BJP source told IANS, without giving details.
Inclusive
of the chief minister, the PDP will have 11 cabinet berths and the BJP
six, including Lone. The PDP and BJP have three and five junior
ministers respectively.
Two women were named junior ministers: Priya Sethi (BJP) and Asiya Naqash (PDP).
The
PDP cabinet ministers are Abdul Rehman Bhat Veeri, Javaid Mustafa Mir,
Abdul Haq Khan, Syed Basharat Bukhari, Chowdhary Zulfiqar Ali, Haseeb
Drabu, Ghulam Nabi Lone Hanjura, Altaf Bukhari, Imran Raza Ansari and
Naeem Akhtar.
The BJP's cabinet ministers are Nirmal Singh
(deputy chief minister), Chander Prakash, Choudhary Lal Singh, Bali
Baghat, Sukhnandan Kumar and Sajad Gani Lone (Peoples Conference).
The
BJP's junior ministers are Chering Dorjay, Sunil Kumar Sharma, Abdul
Ghani Kohli, Priya Sethi and Pawan Gupta. The PDP's junior ministers are
Abdul Majeed Paddar, Muhammad Ashraf Mir and Asiya Naqash.
While
Sayeed took oath in English, his party colleagues took oath in Urdu or
English. The BJP ministers took oath in English and Hindu except
Choudhary Lal Singh who went for Dogri.
This is the second time
Sayeed will head a coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir. He took
power in 2002, heading a PDP-Congress alliance, for a three-year term.
The
Kashmir verdict brought about a clear divide between the
Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley and the Hindu-dominated Jammu region,
with the PDP winning almost all its seats in the valley and the BJP
sweeping Jammu.
Even as it became clear that the BJP and the PDP
would have to team up to form a government, their negotiations became
protracted because of the two parties' known differences over some vital
issues.
This is the first time the BJP is tasting power in Jammu
and Kashmir, the country's only Muslim-majority state where a
separatist campaign which has raged since 1989 has left thousands dead.
