Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 26 March 2018 | Page 18
PURGE IN PDP
Too Good
To Play
Number 2
The CM chucks her finance minister.
Did she sense a parallel power centre?
by Naseer Ganai in Srinagar
I
N early 2003, Haseeb Drabu had returned to the Valley
as economic advisor to the chief minister. The two-party
coalition government then was led by the Peoples Dem-
ocratic Party (PDP) founder Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
The budget that year was zero-deficit for the first time in
the state’s history, winning the praise of even the Oppo-
sition National Conference (NC). The PhD holder from
Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University went on to become a
loyalist of Sayeed’s PDP, which he joined in 2014 ahead of
the state elections that he won. Today, that 15-year tryst
with the PDP has soured: the ruling party in Jammu and
Kashmir has dismissed Drabu as finance minister.
Known for his penchant for courting controversies, the
57-year-old from Srinagar got the sack on March 12—three days
after he delivered a speech at a Delhi convention of a vintage
trade body. A portion of the talk turned out to be controversial,
but wasn’t actually something new from Drabu. What he perti-
nently told the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry event
was this: Kashmir is not a political issue. “It is a society which
has social issues right now. We are trying to find our own space,”
he said about the border-state and its government his party
runs in association with the BJP.
GETTY IMAGES
Now, already Drabu had been gaining vitality in administra-
tive powers what with him having played a critical role in cob- OUT Haseeb Drabu, who was sacked on March 12
bling up the ruling coalition in Srinagar. In 2015, it was Drabu,
along BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, who came up with AoA. As the acrimony continued, the CM eventually called him
an Agenda of Alliance (AoA) that marked the PDP’s political for a meeting late March 12 evening at her official residence.
outlook and cemented the formation of a government with The minister was told to go.
What infuriated the PDP was Drabu’s ‘self-donned role as an
parties that had otherwise not much in common. Quite a few of
his party colleagues weren’t in agreement with the document authority’ to speak on the J&K government’s views on Kashmir.
that practically muted the PDP’s pre-poll promise of withdraw- “All that when the CM has been insisting on a dialogue between
ing a controversial Act that grants central armed forces special India and Pakistan,” points out a senior leader of the
1999-founded party. “Drabu was addressing the Delhi gathering
powers in areas notified as ‘disturbed’.
Cut to March 9, 2018. Addressing select ambassadors and on behalf of the CM. He hit at the PDP’s core ideology. That’s
industrialists in the national capital, the minister said J&K was why Mehbooba took serious note of it.”
The exit apart, Drabu puts up an unruffled face. “I only focused
not a conflict state and that Kashmiri netas “have been barking
up the wrong tree” for the past seven decades, during which the on a thought that has been in my mind for long: the role of civil
“political situation has never improved”. In Srinagar, an ince society in resolving the issue of Kashmir,” he tells Outlook,
nsed PDP sought an explanation from Drabu. In any case, arguing that his point was made in a “larger context of how the
many of his fellow leaders had been blaming him for the gov- Kashmir issue has ravaged our society and impaired the sensi-
ernment’s failure in implementing the political agenda of the bilities, especially of the youth.”
18 OUTLOOK 26 March 2018