Mufti Mohammad Sayeed takes oath as J&K CM

Srinagar, The 79-year-old Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed took over as 12th Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday.

Mufti was administered oath as Chief Minister of PDP-BJP coalition government by State Governor N N Vohra at 11.09 am at Jammu University’s General Zorawar Auditorium in Jammu (winter capital of the State) amid tight security measures in and around the venue.

Mufti is for the second time becoming chief minister of the State and his party PDP is sharing power with saffron party BJP. It is for first time in State’s history that BJP is part of any State government.

PDP and BJP, which got 28 and 25 seats respectively in 87-member J&K Assembly in recent polls, reached government formation deal few days back after being engaged in hard negotiations for about two months on contentious issues like Article 370, lifting of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), settlement of West Pakistan Refugees (WPRs), resumption of talks with Pakistan and separatists and reclaiming of power projects from NHPC.

The two parties had contested polls against each other but cobbled up alliance after none of the parties got majority in the Assembly polls.

Born on January 12, 1936 in South Kashmir Anantnag district’s Bijbehara townhip, Mufti is being seen as a shrewd politician and a smart political strategist, which is quite visible the way he engaged the saffron party in hard negotiations on government formation in the State.

Before taking oath of office and secrecy today, he had met political leaders of all shades during his two day-stay in national capital from February 27.

Besides meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he met former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, former PM Manmohan Singh, senior Congress leader and former J&K CM Ghulam Nabi Azad, JDU chief Sharad Yadav, senior BJP leaders L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, etc and invited them for his swearing-in ceremony.

Mufti, a Congressman for over four decades, had quit the party in 1999 and floated his own regional party Peoples Democratic Party with a “separatist-like-agenda” of resolving the Kashmir issue.

Within a span of three years of forming his own party, he headed a coalition government in the State with Congress for three years from 2002 to 2005 despite having only 16 legislators.