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Onkar Singh in New Delhi
Jammu and Kashmir chief minister designate and People's Democratic Party chief Mufti Mohammad Sayeed will meet Governor Girish Chandra Saxena at 1700 IST to stake claim to form the government.
He will be accompanied by the Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee president Ghulam Nabi Azad, Jammu and Kashmir Panther's Party chief Bhim Singh, and Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami of the newly formed People's Democratic Forum.
PDP sources said Sayeed is planning a medium-sized Cabinet.
"We have not yet started talking to our coalition partners. Azad arrives in Srinagar on Wednesday afternoon and thereafter we would start looking into the issue of Cabinet formation and how much representation to be given to each faction," Muzaffar Hussain Baig, PDP vice-president, said on phone from Srinagar.
"Dr Farooq Abdullah had twenty-seven ministers in his cabinet -- fourteen of them were of Cabinet rank. We would have a couple of ministers either more or less," he said.
The Cabinet would be sworn in two stages, PDP sources said. In the first stage chief minister, deputy chief minister and some senior ministers would be sworn in.
Though the Congress party has not yet made public its choice for the deputy chief minister, it is widely believed that Mangat Ram Sharma, a former Union minister, would be the party's choice.
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