Tariq Hameed Karra quits Lok Sabha, flays PM, Mehbooba Mufti for J&K deaths

Founding PDP leader and Srinagar Lok Sabha MP Tariq Hameed Karra announced his resignation from his party and Parliament on Thursday, accusing the Narendra Modi government and J&K chief minister Mehbooba Mufti of “an unabated genocide of Kashmiris”. He is the first MP from the state to quit Parliament.

He charged Mufti’s BJP-backed government in the state with giving a freehand to the BJP-led government at the Centre to kill, maim and jail Kashmiris and stifle political voices in the Valley. Lashing out at the Prime Minister, Mr Karra said his “imperialistic methods” intensified the Kashmir unrest, and only blaming Pakistan for the current situation was a self-defeating approach.

“The PDP has become a collaborator for fascist RSS (Rashtriya Swayam-sevak Sangh)-governed BJP,” said the 61-year-old leader who always opposed the idea of a PDP-BJP alliance. Mr Karra held important portfolios, including finance, in the previous J&K government backed by the Congress.

Eighty-two civilians—mainly youth — have been killed and 11,500 wounded in a spiral of violence sparked by militant Burhan Wani’s encounter killing on July 8. Two policemen have also died and 5,500 injured in 69 days of violence. Mr Karra blamed the Centre and the state for their “continued denial of the dangerous ground realities, insensitive and adhoc approach towards the Kashmir issue”.

“My conscience cannot take it any longer. My heart is bleeding and my soul is crying for the people of my homeland,” he told reporters at his residence. Mr Karra won from Srinagar by defeating former chief minister and then ruling National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah in the 2014 general polls.

He said the PDP was floated in 1999 to safeguard lives, property, honour, dignity, self-respect and political aspirations of the people. “But today, in the present tragic circumstances, it has made a U-turn and treated its subjects in a manner worse than the Nazi forces treated theirs. I cannot subscribe to the administratively inhuman and politically unethical blunders.”

He said he was leaving it to the conscience of all other members of Parliament, MLAs and MLCs from his party to decide whether they would like to side with their helpless people or allow the bloodshed “perpetuated by RSS-driven BJP and facilitated by the PDP”.