PDP rift wide open as leaders skip Mehbooba’s function

Arteev Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, January 30

Rift within the crisis-ridden Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) came out in the open when several founder members of the party preferred to stay away from PDP president Mehbooba Mufti’s visit to the party office here on Wednesday.

While some leaders claimed that they were not invited for interaction, insiders said the leaders decided not to attend the PDP chief’s programme to lodge their protest against “abandoning” of aspirations of Jammu residents by allegedly pursuing “soft separatism” and promoting “outsiders and junior-rung leaders” to important positions in the party.

“Several founder members, including former MP Tirlok Singh Bajwa, former party general secretaries Ved Mahajan and Daman Bhasin, and senior leaders Surinder Choudhary and Rashid Malik stayed away from the PDP chief’s visit to the party office where she held an interaction with party workers in view of the Assembly elections,” party insiders said, adding, “This is not a good sign for the PDP keeping in view the parliamentary and Assembly elections in the state”.

They said there was a “genuine resentment” among senior leaders from the Jammu region against the party’s “shift” in its policy after the fall of PDP-BJP government in June last year.

“The party will have to strike a balance between two ideologically different regions of the state while framing its policy and strategy before the next Assembly elections. Several senior leaders have already left the party and if immediate remedial measures are not taken, some top leaders from Jammu are contemplating to quit the party,” a senior leader said.

Sources said Mehbooba, as a damage-control exercise, invited founder members and senior leaders to her residence and held separate discussions with them.

The resentment within Jammu cadre of the party had started with the appointment of Tassaduq Mufti (brother of PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti) as an MLC and a Cabinet Minister in the previous PDP-BJP coalition after former PDP leader Vikramaditya Singh resigned from the post and the basic membership of the party in October 2017.

Jammu leaders of the party were expecting that they would be considered for the vacant post of the MLC but the party leadership decided against their wishes.