Discontent brews among PDP cadre in Jammu region

Arteev Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, January 11

Anger has been brewing within the PDP cadre here against the virtual “abandoning” of the Jammu region by the party’s leadership to reclaim the lost ground in its core constituency in the Kashmir valley.

Instead of striking a balance between the two regions of the state, the party leadership, after losing power in June last year, has been pursuing “soft-separatism” by ignoring the aspirations of Jammu people that has put the party’s leadership here on a shaky ground.

This resentment also has its roots in 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 basic membership of the party in October 2017.

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

On January 7, PDP patron Muzaffar Hussain Baig admitted this mistake of the party, saying “instead of appointing Tassaduq, the MLC seat should have been given to a senior party leader from Jammu, because they deserved it more than anyone else”.

Appointment of the party’s chief coordinator, Choudhary Abdul Hamid, as the vice-president of the Jammu region by ignoring senior local leaders “just to consolidate party vote bank in the Muslim majority areas” of the region has further fuelled the anger.

“Hamid, who had joined the PDP after resigning the Congress, is considered as an outsider within the party and he was elevated at the cost of senior leaders just to consolidate the vote bank of a particular community. Many leaders are now feeling suffocated and humiliated,” said a senior party leader who declined to be named.

“Since the formation of the PDP, it was a precedent within the party that a member from the minority community would be appointed as the party vice-president from the Jammu region, while a majority community leader would get the post in the Valley to strike a balance between the two regions. After the death of late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed on January 7, 2016, the party has lost direction and it has gradually lost its credentials of being a secular political group,” another senior leader said.