At least seven ministers were marked absent in the cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti after 50 days here on Tuesday.
A source said that three ministers from the PDP and four from the BJP skipped the meeting.
The absentees, the source said, included GhulamNabi Lone (minister for agriculture), Abdul Haq Khan (minister for rural development department), Imran Raza Ansari (minister for youth services and sports), Bali Baghat (minister for health and medical education), Sham Choudhary (minister for PHE, irrigation and flood control), Choudhary Lal Singh (minister for forests) and Chering Dojree (minister for cooperatives).
The cabinet, held last time on August 9, is the state’s highest decision-making body and presently comprises 18 ministers—10 from PDP, seven from BJP and one from the Peoples Conference.
When contacted, government spokesman and minister for public works department, Naeem Akther claimed that the ministers who missed the cabinet meeting were “out of town.”
“They were at different places for official purposes,” he said, adding that “routine items” were on the agenda of the meeting.
Of late, the ministers from the coalition government have come under criticism for remaining absent from the civil secretariat, the source disclosed. An official said that the ministers prefer to spend their time at their residences than attending to their offices regularly.
“Over the past one month, only few ministers are seen in the civil secretariat regularly. People turn up in large numbers from far-flung areas to get their grievances redressed, but they return disappointed due to absence of ministers in their official chambers,” he said.
The official said that ministers from Jammu province frequently shuttle between Srinagar and their constituencies. “They hardly stay here (in civil secretariat),” he said.
Zulfikar Walks Out
PDP minister Choudhary Zulfiqar Ali on Tuesday staged a walkout from the cabinet meeting after he sparred with BJP ministers over proposed eviction of Gujjar families in Samba, Jammu.
A source told Kashmir Post that Zulfiqar took a strong exception to remarks of BJP minister Chandra Prakash Ganga, who was supported by deputy chief minister Nirmal Singh, that Gujjar families should be evicted from Samba to start work on construction of an all-India institute of medical sciences (AIIMS).
“You have evicted them from forests. Where would they live? I will not allow this to happen,” the source quoted Zulfiqar as saying.
Later, Zulfiqar walked out of the meeting to protest against the proposed eviction of Gujjars from the area. More than 200 Gujjar families live on the land identified for the proposed medical institution.
