Roundup: Indian-controlled Kashmir gets first woman chief minister

Mehbooba Mufti was Monday sworn in as the first woman chief minister of restive Indian-controlled Kashmir.

The 56-year-old Mufti was administered the oath of office by region's Governor N N Vohra at Raj Bhavan in Jammu city, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Mufti will lead a coalition with India's ruling Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP).

A senior leader from BJP Nirmal Singh will be Mufti's deputy. Singh too took oath as deputy chief minister of the region.

With the new government in place, the three-month long governor's rule in the region since the demise of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's has come to an end.

Initially Mufti demanded federal government headed by Narendra Modi to announce Kashmir specific confidence building measures (CBMs) as a guarantee for her to lead the alliance with them.

Though the federal government did not announced any such steps, Mufti, after several rounds of talks with BJP, finally met Prime Minister Modi last month to hammer a deal. Mufti described the meeting "positive" without making its details public.

PDP and BJP, though ideologically divergent to each other, came closer in 2015 after the local elections in the region yielded a fractured mandate. Mufti's father Mufti Mohammed Sayeed took over as the chief minister after two parties agreed to work on "agenda of alliance" to run the affairs.

Sayeed himself had called the alliance a meeting of the North and South Pole. However Sayeed's demise in January this year resulted in a deadlock with both parties taking tough postures.

In December last year, a month before his death, Sayeed hinted about transferring the baton to his daughter. However, Mufti rejected to take over as the region's head.

A law graduate, Mufti has been into politics since 1996. She helped her father to launch a regional party PDP, after he quit Congress and helped him realize the dream of becoming the chief minister.

Mufti has separated from her husband and is living as a single. She has two daughters.

However, analysts describe Mufti's renewed coalition with BJP as her party's surrender.

"When on April 4, Mehbooba Mufti, the PDP president, takes office as chief minister of Indian Jammu and Kashmir in coalition with the BJP, her fall will be even more abject than was that of her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed when he took oath of office as chief minister as head of this coalition on March 1, 2015," writes a noted Indian columnist A G Noorani.

"He had the fig leaf of the 'agenda of alliance' to cover his fall. She has nothing; only a record of broken pledges."

A separatist movement and guerilla war challenging New Delhi's rule is going on in Indian-controlled Kashmir since 1989.

Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan is claimed by both in full. Since their independence from Britain, the two countries have fought three wars, two exclusively over Kashmir. Endit