In setback for Mehbooba Mufti, PDP leader Haseeb Drabu quits party

Haseeb Drabu had served as J&K finance minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government.

SRINAGAR: Former Jammu and Kashmir finance minister Haseeb Drabu on Thursday resigned from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in a big setback for party chief and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti.

According to reports, Drabu sent a letter addressed to the PDP president in which he claimed that he had not been associating with party affairs for some time now.

Drabu, who once served as the state's finance minister, further said that since he had won elections on PDP ticket, he felt it morally incorrect to resign as long as the state Assembly was intact.

"Now that it is (Assembly) over, I am hereby resigning from the PDP," Drabu said in his letter.

Drabu also posted his letter on his Twitter handle.

Bidding Adieu to PDP. Another phase of life over. pic.twitter.com/r5YbZoYRYb — Haseeb Drabu (@HaseebDrabu) 6 December 2018

In his letter, Drabu stated that his exit from the PDP had been coming for a while now.

"Even though I have not been a dissident... I have disengaged myself from party affairs for quite some time now," he wrote in the letter.

In his long emotional resignation letter, Drabu remembered former chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed who had sought him out and brought him into politics.

"Working with him made me realise that politics is not the 'last refuge of scoundrels'!.. 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," he said.

After Imran Ansari, Drabu is the second leader to abandon the party after Governor Satypal Malik dissolved the state assembly on November 21.