GN Ratanpuri quits as Khalil Bandh joins NC

SRINAGAR — Former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader Muhammad Khalil Bandh on Sunday joined National Conference (NC) in Srinagar. The development triggered a resignation from Ghulam Nabi Ratanpuri, who seemed unhappy and left the party.

Bandh, a founding member of PDP, joined NC at its headquarters in presence of NC patron Dr Farooq Abdullah.

The former minister had resigned from PDP citing party’s “compromise” on the basic principles of democracy.

Hours after Khalil Bandh joined National Conference, G N Ratanpuri, former Rajya Sabha member, resigned from the party. Ratanpuri submitted a letter to NC president Dr Farooq Abdullah.

“This is to tender my resignation from Central Working Committee, primary membership and any other position that I may be holding in the J&K National Conference.

Please ask the Vice President, General Secretary and the two Provincial Presidents of Kashmir and Jammu to let my exit be as quiet and dignified as my entry was.

“I hope they will forget all the heated arguments and altercations I had with them all through the past ten years regularly. I realised that the only way to stop this bitterness was to quit. I expect them too to realise that nothing was and nothing is personal.”

“I was always an outsider in NC”

G N Ratanpuri has said that he was always an outsider in the National Conference.

“I was on the fence, never allowed to set second foot in the party, but all through these ten years I forcefully voiced my opinion and the concerns of common Kashmiri despite the attempts to throttle me,” he said in a statement issued to KNS.

He lamented that his “audacity” to confront the “high command” may have encouraged a few young leaders to occasionally speak out, but the seniors whom he once idolised chose to remain deaf, dumb and blind.

He said that Omar Abdullah feels proud and delighted in expressing his grandfather as a leader who made people to follow him and who valued his own opinion more than the sentiments and aspirations of his people.

“Omer Abdullah on December 05, 2013 while addressing a gathering on his grandfather’s mazar narrated that how Sheikh Sahib took his people to India through accession in 1947 and through the accord in 1975 against their will, but successfully got their post facto approval because he believed that India was better an option than Pakistan or Azadi. I used to stress upon the leadership to reassure the youth who see no future in India and sacrifice their lives for a dream, tell them that you have taken them to India, India continues to be the best choice and you will protect their honor, their life and their interests,” said Ratanpuri.

According to him, the Party would generally discuss nothing beyond tricks and schemes to win the elections. He said that till the counting day of 17th Lok Sabha elections Dr. Farooq Abdullah called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a dictator, even Hitler. While in Modi’s BJP we hear some voices of dissent, the National Conference lacks the spirit to tolerate even one single voice of dissent.

About his future plans, he quipped, “wait and watch.”