MUZAFFARABAD: In an attempt to assuage the discontentment in the ruling parliamentary party in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Prime Minister Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, on Friday, gave an additional charge of some of the departments to three cabinet members.

In a related move, he also approved Rs2.5 to Rs5 million for at least eight parliamentary party members for the execution of community level development schemes, at their discretion.

According to the notification, the prime minister gave the charge of the information, cooperatives and irrigation departments, respectively, to the minister for agriculture and livestock, Bazil Ali Naqvi, the minister for transport, Tahir Khokhar, and the minister for law, Syed Azhar Gillani.

The allotments were made a day after a member of National Assembly, Faryal Talpur, held separate meetings with the AJK president, Sardar Yaqoob Khan, Legislative Assembly (LA) speaker, Sardar Ghulam Sadiq, and eight AJK cabinet members, in Karachi, to get ‘first hand knowledge’ of their alleged grievances against Prime Minister Majeed and Minister Chaudhry Mohammad Yasin.

During the meeting, those who have crossed swords with Mr Majeed were said to have conveyed to Ms Talpur to replace the incumbent premier, with a ‘neat and clean’ person from within the party, for the “smooth functioning of the government in the remaining 28 or so months.

”After their feedback, Ms Talpur announced to hold a joint meeting of the entire parliamentary party in Karachi, on April 12, for a final decision in this regard, one of the attendees told Dawn.

He claimed that the allotment of additional portfolios to cabinet members was made at the advice of Ms Talpur and that it would not resolve the actual problem.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Majeed approved financial grants from his Special Directive Programme (SDP) in the Local Government and Rural Development (LG&RD) department.

A notification to this effect issued by LG&RD secretariat, the other day, however, stated that the approval was subject to the availability of funds.

One of the discontented ministers told Dawn that the notification was an abortive attempt to pacify the parliamentary party members, who were resentful since long of the discriminatory allocations, made by Prime Minister Majeed and LG&RD minister Chaudhry Yasin for their constituencies.

In the current fiscal year, he said, the premier and the LG&RD minister had allocated Rs100 million each for SDP and the Block Provision, which are, respectively, at their sole discretion.

Of this Rs200 million, they had so far spent a total of Rs130 million, in their respective constituencies, which had offended the rest, he said.