Home Ministry rejects suggestion that attempt being made to curtail powers of new govt, CM in J&K

New Delhi, Oct 4 (PTI) The Union Home Ministry on Friday strongly rejected the suggestion that there is an attempt to curtail the powers of the soon-to-be-elected chief minister or the next elected government in Jammu and Kashmir, saying there is not even an iota of truth in it.

The strong statement from Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s Office came after former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah asked bureaucrats in the Union Territory to resist any pressure to “further disempower” the incoming elected government.

In response to Abdullah’s post on X, Shah’s office took to the social media platform to say, “Mr @OmarAbdullah’s tweet is misleading and speculative in nature. There is not even an iota of truth, as there is absolutely no such proposal.”

In a post on the microblogging site, the former chief minister said, “The BJP has clearly accepted defeat in J-K. Why else would the chief secretary be assigned the duty to change transaction of business rules of the government to curtail the powers of the chief minister/elected government and assign the same to the LG?”

The Home Minister’s Office (HMO) said the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act of 2019 passed by the Parliament of India provides for notifying the transaction of business rules, and the same was notified in the year 2020.

“The people of J&K have wholeheartedly supported the efforts of the Government of India to bring in a democratically elected government through the historic free and fair election process in which the citizens participated enthusiastically,” it said.

In his post on ‘X’, Abdullah also said that he got the information from within the Jammu and Kashmir administration secretariat. “Officers would be well advised to resist any pressure to further disempower the incoming elected government,” he said.

The three-phased polling to the Jammu and Kashmir assembly concluded on October 1 with 63.88 per cent of voters exercising their franchise. The results of the elections will be announced on October 8.

The erstwhile state was bifurcated under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act of 2019 on August 5, 2019, into two Union Territories — Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.