Omar Abdullah-led J&K govt removes senior BJP leader Hina Bhat as Khadi board head

Jammu and Kashmir government removed senior BJP leader Hina Bhat as the head of the Kashmir Khadi and Village Industries Board (KVIB). This comes with a formation of a new board which will be headed by Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Choudhary who is also J&K’s industries minister.

The decision was taken on Monday night after a cabinet meeting that was headed by J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah in Jammu.

For the unversed, Hina Bhat is the daughter of former Srinagar MP Mohammad Shafi Bhat. She is also a senior most BJP leader who has been heading the KVIB for the past one year. It is also noteworthy to mention that Hina had contested assembly elections in 2024, but turned out to be unsuccessful on the BJP ticket.

"Deputy chief minister and minister for industries and commerce department Surinder Kumar Choudhary has been appointed as the chairman of the board. Administrative secretary finance, administrative secretary rural development and panchayati raj department, administrative secretary industries and commerce department, registrar cooperative societies, J&K, director general (Codes), finance department, director MSME DL, J&K, director industries and commerce, Jammu, mission director rural livelihood mission J&K and director industries and commerce Kashmir have been appointed as directors of the board,” reads the order.

With the latest move by the J&K government, Hina becomes the first BJP leader who was removed as head of one of the two boards in the union territory. Now, all eyes are on the fate of Dr Darakshan Andrabi who heads the J&K Waqf Board.

After these two leaders were left untouched till now, many were seeing this as National Conference’s tactic to keep BJP central leadership in a good humour. After Omar’s recent praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi while they shared the stage at the opening of Z Morh tunnel, many opposition leaders blamed Omar for allying with the BJP. 

However, removal of senior BJP leader is seen by many as a message by the National Conference to its core constituency that the party isn’t coming close to BJP.