Setback for PDP as Drabu quits

Tribune News Service

Jammu, December 6

In a major setback to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), its senior leader and former Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu on Thursday resigned from the party without specifying any particular reason.

Drabu announced his resignation in a letter (uploaded on Twitter) to PDP president Mehbooba Mufti on Thursday evening while saying, “Bidding adieu to PDP! Another phase of life over”.

In his letter, Drabu, who was associated with the PDP for the past over four years, said, “This had been coming for a while now. Even though I have not been a dissident — you are aware I had resigned from the Cabinet, Assembly and party nearly two years ago which you didn’t accept — I have disengaged myself from party affairs for quite some time now.”

“I didn’t precipitate the matter because I believe it is ethically and morally wrong to leave the party under whose aegis one has contested and won the seat in the Legislative Assembly. Now that it is over, I am resigning from the J&K PDP,” said Drabu in his resignation letter.

The resignation of Drabu, who was an architect behind the PDP and BJP alliance after the Assembly elections in 2014, has come almost a fortnight after the veteran leader of PDP and parliamentarian Muzaffar Hussain Baig had thrown his weight behind People’s Conference chairman Sajad Lone and said he would “seriously consider joining” the third front.

Drabu was sacked as the Finance Minister on March 12 this year after his controversial remark that “J&K shouldn’t be seen as a conflict state or a political problem, but as a society with social issues”.

Drabu, who is former chairman of J&K Bank, also expressed his disagreement over the way the state Assembly was dissolved by Governor SP Malik on November 21.

“My legislative engagement has prematurely come to an end with the dissolution of the Assembly by the Governor. I don’t agree with the timing and manner in which it was done. It doesn’t credit either the democratic system or its custodian participants with any glory whatsoever,” he said.

He also recalled his association with PDP founder Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, saying he brought him into politics and he was “exceptionally lucky to have worked with him”.

“Working with him made me realise that politics is not the ‘last refuge of scoundrels’! Occasionally, people with intellectual integrity, personal honesty and moral courage can also be found here… I just hope that when history judges Mufti Saheb and his decision to ally with the BJP, it does so in the context and with the complexity that it deserves,” Drabu wrote while describing his association with the PDP as “enriching and enlightening”.

Architect of PDP-BJP coalition

• The resignation of Haseeb Drabu, who was an architect of the PDP and BJP alliance after the Assembly elections in 2014, has come almost a fortnight after the veteran leader of PDP and parliamentarian Muzaffar Hussain Baig had thrown his weight behind People’s Conference chairman Sajad Lone and said he would “seriously consider joining” the third front
• Drabu was sacked as the Finance Minister on March 12 this year after his controversial remark that “J&K shouldn’t be seen as a conflict state or a political problem, but as a society with social issues”