PDP Chief Mehbooba Mufti
Days after Peoples Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti's remarks over the Indian flag and Article 370, three senior leaders quit the party on Monday. PDP leaders TS Bajwa, Ved Mahajan, and Hussain A Waffa resigned from the party. These leaders were with the PDP since the days of Mehbooba's father, late Mufti Muhammad Sayeed.
In a letter to party president Mufti, they stated that they are 'feeling quite uncomfortable over some of her actions and undesirable utterances especially which hurt patriotic sentiments'.
PDP chief and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti on Friday said that she was not interested in contesting elections or holding the tricolour till the constitutional changes enforced on August 5 last year were rolled back. Speaking at her first press conference after her release from 14-month detention, Mehbooba Mufti had said that her party would not hoist the Indian Tricolour unless allowed to raise the flag of Jammu and Kashmir also. She would hold the tricolour only when the separate flag of the erstwhile state was restored.
Before the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution on August 5 last year, Jammu and Kashmir had a separate flag and a separate Constitution applicable concomitantly with the country's Constitution and the national flag.
On Saturday, the Peoples Alliance for the Gupkar Declaration that is fighting for the restoration of special status to Jammu and Kashmir met in Srinagar and named National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah as its chairman and Mehbooba Mufti as its deputy chairperson.
Abdullah asserted that the seven-party alliance is an anti-BJP platform and not an anti-national grouping.
