Srinagar, Oct 27: Chief Minister Omar Abdullah prioritised experience as he inducted veteran party leaders Ali Mohammad Sagar, Saifullah Mir and Shamim Firdous into his Council of Ministers on Tuesday.
Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha administered the oath of office to the newly inducted ministers at a ceremony at Lok Bhawan.
With the induction of four new ministers, including Pahalgam MLA Altaf Ahmad Wani (Kallo), the Council of Ministers has reached its maximum permissible strength of nine.
Surinder Chaudhary, Sakina Itoo, Javed Dar, Javed Rana and Satish Sharma were part of the previous Council of Ministers.
Sharma, the Independent MLA from Chhamb in the Jammu region, who was a surprise inclusion when the Abdullah government was sworn in in 2024, has been dropped from the council as the ruling National Conference sought to strengthen its core base in the Kashmir Valley, giving representation to the districts of Srinagar, Anantnag and Kupwara.
Ali Mohammad Sagar and Saifullah Mir were ministers in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, while Shamim Firdous and Altaf Ahmad Wani have become ministers for the first time.
However, Firdous had headed the State Women’s Commission when Jammu and Kashmir was a state.
Sagar (73), a former minister and seven-time MLA, was first elected to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly from Batamaloo seat here in 1983. He retained the seat in 1987. Later, he shifted to Khanyar, which he won in 1996.
Sagar has never lost an Assembly election.
He won the Khanyar seat in 2024, defeating former Deputy Mayor of Srinagar Sheikh Imran, who contested as an independent candidate, by a margin of 9,912 votes.
He had been a Minister of State in the government headed by Farooq Abdullah from 1996-2002, then a cabinet minister in the Omar Abdullah-led government from 2009-2014.
Mir (66), who represented the Kupwara constituency of north Kashmir thrice from 1996 to 2014, was elected from the Trehgam seat, which was created after the delimitation exercise in 2022.
He had served as the Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister in the Omar Abdullah government from 2009 to 2014.
Wani (74) represents the Pahalgam Assembly constituency, which he won in 2014 and retained in 2024. Despite losing the 2008 Assembly elections to the PDP candidate by more than 10,000 votes, the party leadership sent Wani to the legislative council in 2009.
Firdous (60) was elected from the Habbakadal constituency here for the third time in 2024. She is also president of the party’s women’s wing and is the second woman in the Abdullah-led Council of Ministers after Itoo.
The Congress, an ally of the government, has distanced itself from the cabinet and stuck to its stand of not joining the Council of Ministers until the statehood is restored. (PTI)
