20000115

AJK cabinet

dissolved: New

ministers to be

sworn-in today

ROSHAN MUGHAL

MUZAFFARABAD: AJK Prime Minister Sultan Mehmood Choudhary on Friday dissolved his 17-member cabinet, a notification issued by services and general administration department here says.

The new cabinet is likely to be sworn-in on Saturday for induction of which Prime Minister Sultan Mehmood has been consulting his close aides and former kitchen cabinet and also suspended deputy opposition leader in the National Assembly Syed Khurshid Ahmed Shah.

It has been learnt that new cabinet will comprise six to nine ministers, one each from each district and from occupied refugees valley and Jammu settled in Pakistan.

The government of General Pervez Musharraf has been pressurising Sultan Mehmood to reduce the army of ministers to curtail the non-developmental expenditures and spend more on the development projects.

Gen Musharraf during his visit to AJK capital last month had directed the premier to downsize the cabinet and induct efficient people into the cabinet.

There were 17 ministers in the house of 48 excluding speaker, deputy speaker, parliamentary secretaries and chairman of different prime ministers' commission and besides advisers.

After the dissolution, ministers of outgoing cabinet were seem confident of their reinduction into new cabinet.

Later in talk with the newsmen at Kashmir House Islamabad, Sultan Mehmood, while terming the dissolution as a part of parliamentary process, said that he will shortly announce the new cabinet. He said that he had earlier the portfolios of the ministers and declared his former cabinet members as honest and efficient.

None of the member of my former cabinet was corrupt nor they were inefficient and changes are being brought for betterment, Sultan said and hoped that new cabinet will work more efficiently and honestly.

To a question the premier denied of any pressure from military government to downsize the cabinet. He said that for curtailing of expenditures, there is need to cut the ministries not ministers. He added that ministries will be reduced in the light of the recommendations of newly formed administrative reforms commission (ARC).