Kashmir unrest: Veteran PDP leader Tariq Karra quits party, resign as MP

Senior PDP leader Tariq Karra on Thursday announced his resignation from the party and Parliament, accusing the PDP of being a collaborator with the RSS. “The PDP has become a collaborator for fascist RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh)-governed BJP,” Karra told reporters in Srinagar. A report in Greater Kashmir said that the resignation has come as a protest against the massive unrest in the Valley. “I am resigning from the basic membership of PDP as a mark of protest against civilian killings in Kashmir,” quoted him as saying. [caption id=“attachment_3004712” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Senior PDP leader Tariq Karra has resigned from the party and as an MP as a protest against the killings of civillians. More than 80 people have been killed and over 11000 have been injured in the Valley in the ongoing unrest. PTI[/caption] CNN-News18 also reported that the veteran PDP leader has cited the government’s “heavy handed” approach in handling of the current unrest as the reason behind his resignation. Elected to the Lok Sabha in 2014, Karra was a close aide of the late Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and was one of the founding members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). A heavyweight in Kashmir Politics, Karra had at one point defeated former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister in the Lok Sabha elections from Srinagar, the later’s first electoral defeat since he joined politics three decades ago, according to a report in  The Indian Express. Karra had been very vocal and expressive about his dissatisfaction in the past too, ever since the new government came to power in Kashmir. He had, on previous occasions, indicated that he has been mulling resigning from the party. “I am very closely watching the situation and even protesting and agitating on it within available means. As and when I would feel that all other available means have failed in restoring peace and tranquility in the state and normalizing the situation, I would not hesitate to quit as Member Parliament,” a report in  Kashmir Reader from August this year quoted him as saying. Karra had always opposed the idea of a PDP-BJP alliance and made his dissent known earlier also. According to a report in  India Today, Karra had said that the alliance did not give anything apart from “broken promises” to the party, stating, it was an unnatural alliance in the first place and should not have been forged in the first place. He had even skipped Mehbooba Mufti's oath taking ceremony over differences with chef minister about ministerial berths. The resignation comes as the Kashmir Valley is battling months of the deadliest unrest it has suffered in six years. A total of 86 persons were killed and 11,500 injured in the ongoing unrest that started on 9 July a day after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed. With inputs from IANS