BJP pulled out of the alliance with Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP in Jammu and Kashmir.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday announced it was leaving the Jammu and Kashmir government, ending its alliance with chief minister Mehbooba Mufti People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
“It has become untenable for the BJP to continue with the alliance in Jammu and Kashmir,” said senior BJP leader Ram Madhav at a press conference in Delhi.
The two parties formed a coalition government in 2015 after elections threw up a hung assembly, but they were ideologically divided on a range of issues. Their alliance came under strain in April after the gang-rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl from the nomadic Muslim community of Bakarwals in Jammu’s Kathua district.
Two BJP ministers of the state government were dropped in a cabinet reshuffle after they took part in a rally demanding that the Central Bureau of Investigation take over the Kathua case.
The BJP’s decision comes after the central government announced on Sunday it was discontinuing the suspension of military operations in Jammu and Kashmir as the holy Islamic month of Ramzan was over, and announced the full resumption of cordon-and-search and search-and-destroy operations in the state to prevent terror attacks. The ceasefire — the first such truce in the troubled state in more than 17 years — had been announced at the appeal of chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, leader of PDP.
