NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to expand his council of ministers to include a key leader from the restive Kashmir region, sources said, as he looks to win the support of allies to push economic reforms through parliament.
Mehbooba Mufti, daughter of Held Kashmir chief minister and president of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which governs in the region alongside Modi’s party, will be inducted into the 65-member council, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.
Modi is expected to announce the changes - his second reshuffle of the executive body since he stormed to power last May - before he departs for an overseas trip on April 8, the sources said.
His Bharatiya Janata Party made history in February when it formed a surprise coalition in Occupied Kashmir with the PDP, the first time the Hindu nationalist party has had a role in governing the Muslim-majority state that is the centre of a long-running revolt against Indian rule.
The PDP’s decision last month to release from prison a leading figure in that revolt angered opposition politicians and embarrassed Modi just as he is struggling to get key pieces of his economic reform agenda passed in parliament.
That includes a controversial bill to change land acquisition rules, which has been held up in the upper house where Modi’s party lacks a majority.
Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan and the nuclear-armed neighbours have fought two wars over the contested region since 1947.
Unlike Modi’s party, the PDP supports self-rule for the region. Among several other expected changes to the council, Modi will also induct a representative from the Shiv Sena party, the BJP’s coalition partner in the populous state of Maharashtra, one of the sources said.
AVALANCHE KILLS FOUR
INDIAN SOLDIERS
AFP adds: An avalanche triggered by heavy snowfall killed four Indian soldiers in the Ladakh region of Occupied Kashmir near the border with China, officials said on Saturday.
The soldiers were travelling in a convoy of three army vehicles which was struck by an avalanche on Friday, the army’s northern command spokesman, SD Goswami told AFP. The avalanche hit at 5,600 metres near Changla Pass, about 500 kilometres east of the region’s main city of Srinagar. “The bodies of three soldiers were recovered. Another is presumed to be dead and a search operation is on to find him,” Goswami said.
Held Kashmir has had incessant rainfall during the past week, flooding homes and triggering landslides in many areas, killing at least 20 people. On Monday 16 people from two families were buried alive in a village in central Kashmir when a house they had gathered in was hit by a landslide.
Rescuers found the body of a 14-year-old boy on Saturday, five days after he was buried under the landslide along with 15 others whose bodies were extricated earlier. The bodies of four other people were recovered by rescuers Saturday after they were buried under a similar landslide a day earlier in the Doda area, 250 kilometres south of Srinagar.
Hundreds of people fled their homes fearing floods after days of heavy rainfall just six months after devastating floods hit the region last year, killing around 300 people and destroying infrastructure and property worth estimated $16 billion.
The Indian Met office has forecast more rains in the coming week, but the government appealed residents for calm, saying “the worst is over.”