Jammu & Kashmir cabinet reshuffle on April 30: Nirmal Singh

Agencies
April 29, 2018

Jammu, Apr 29: The People's Democratic Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir will undertake a major reshuffle of the state cabinet, including induction of some new ministers, on April 30, Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh said tonight.

"The oath ceremony will take place at 12 noon on April 30," Singh said.

He said the list of the inductees is yet to be finalised and some new ministers will be inducted from the BJP as well.

The BJP had on April 17 asked all its nine ministers in the state government to submit their resignations to enable the party to bring in new faces in the two-year-old Mehbooba Mufti cabinet.

The party, however, had not forwarded their resignations to the Governor.

The BJP had been under pressure ever since two of its ministers -- Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga -- took part in a rally in support of those accused in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua. The two ministers had subsequently resigned.

According to sources, the invitation for the April 30 event will be sent to all the ministers and media by tomorrow.

There is a high possibility that one or two ministers of state (MoS) could be elevated to the Cabinet rank, keeping in view their good performance, they said.

The BJP's state cadre, which met the party top brass in New Delhi last Sunday, has undertaken an exercise to finalise the names of new inductees and performance of the current state ministers.

It was not immediately known whether the PDP will also fill up the vacancy caused by the sacking of Haseeb Drabu as Finance Minister last month.

Currently, the BJP has six cabinet ministers, including associate member Sajad Lone, and three MoS.

The state can have a maximum of 25 ministers, including the chief minister, out of which 14 portfolios are with the PDP and the remaining with the BJP.

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News Network
November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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