PDP legislator hits out at Mehbooba

Srinagar, July 1

In a bitter attack on former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, senior PDP legislator Abid Hussain Ansari on Sunday said she has converted the party into a “family fiefdom”.

Addressing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) workers and supporters in the Zadibal area here, Ansari said: “She has destroyed the party and finally converted it into a family fiefdom.

“She got her cameraman brother out of the blue and made him Tourism Minister even when he did not have an elementary knowledge of tourism.” Ansari said he has “always told her that she was surrounded by sycophants who are destroying the party and giving her wrong advice, but she never listened to me because she was busy giving remote control of highly sensitive institutions like the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) to a relative who was running the institute from London”.

He said he had now decided to join a party that would protect the interests of his workers and community members. After the PDP-BJP coalition government fell in the state, this is the first public attack on Mehbooba by a senior party leader.

Ansari belongs to a powerful religious family of the Shia community and sitting MLA and former Education Minister Imran Ansari is his nephew. Imran represents the Pattan constituency in Baramulla district, while Abid Ansari represents the Zadibal constituency here. — IANS