BUDGAM: At the entrance of the National Conference (NC) Srinagar MP Aga Ruhullah Mehdi home’s two large banners at the gate sum up the message he wants to convey. One reads, “Wada kursi se bada hai” (a promise is bigger than a chair), while the other says, “Kirdar ki siyasat, usoolon ki siyasat” (politics of character, politics of principles).Inside the hall, party workers gathered in small groups, discussing the fallout of Mehdi’s announcement that he would formally resign from as NC MP at a rally here on November 3 on the death anniversary of his father. One worker said, “even at a barber’s shop, people do not give up their chairs for someone else even if that person is older. Here is a man willing to leave his chair for the sake of principles. Who gives up a chair like that.”Inside in his room, sitting calmly in his chair, Mehdi insists his decision to part ways with the party is final and there is no going back.“I have been part of this NC for 24 years. I joined it believing that it stood for autonomy and the rights of the people of J&K. But after the abrogation of Article 370, whatever remnants of autonomy we had were taken away and the party despite getting a strong mandate in the 2024 Assembly elections on the promise of challenging the status quo, failed to honour it,” Mehdi told the TOI, accusing the chief minister Omar Abdullah of diluting his electoral position on Article 370, Waqf Amendment Act, Muslim issues, reservations and moving closer to the BJP, “to the point of submission.”In the room, hanging on the wall was a large photograph of his father, Aga Syed Mehdi, a prominent Shia cleric and Congress leader who was assassinated in a terrorist attack on November 3, 2000.“I understand it will be long fight but I am not afraid,” he said, hastily added that whenever the NC faced an ideological challenge, it found it tough to defend its position. The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) managed, he said, for a brief period, to offer it such a challenge before joining an alliance with the BJP in 2015 reduced party to three members today. “There was also an ideological contest between the NC and the Hurriyat Conference in Jammu and Kashmir for many years. I am not endorsing the Hurriyat Conference as it represented the other extreme. But when it came to ideological contestation, the streets were dominated by the other side, not the National Conference,” he said.He said people need to replace traditional political forces like NC and PDP and other like them with more potent one having conviction. “The common problem with these two political parties and others like them, is their lack of character. It is what they have in common. People trusted the NC and the PDP. But they delivered the same kind of results,” he added.Mehdi, who has been critical of the CM and his government, said the chief minister normalised the post-abrogation arrangement through his government, Assembly and other constitutional institutions. “The party began speaking the very language that the BJP wanted people across the country to speak after the abrogation of Article 370,” he said. He said he found further clarity after NC president Farooq Abdullah recently said in an interview that if Mehdi believed what he says he was free to resign from the party.“Referring to me Dr Abdullah said that if I believed Article 370 could be restored, I was free to move out and get it restored. Effectively, he was saying that he himself did not believe Article 370 could not be restored. This again raises the question, if he does not believe it can be restored constitutionally, why people of Jammu and Kashmir were given the assurance during the poll campaign. In the same interview, he asked me to resign from the party as, in his view, I had become an irritant in the process of normalising the post-abrogation status quo. They wanted me to leave the party because I am questioning their position,” he added.Mehdi also rejected the claim that the NC alone was responsible for his victory in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from Srinagar. “The NC never crossed 1.5 lakh votes in this parliamentary constituency in 30 to 40 years. This time I got nearly 3.80 lakh votes. The bulk of the support came from people in South Kashmir who were not associated with the NC,” he said as number of areas of South Kashmir’s Pulwama and Shopian were added to Srinagar in the delimitation exercise of 2023. He, however, said that he contested on the NC ticket and used the party’s name and symbol, making his resignation necessary as he sought to distance himself from the organisation.Mehdi, who is also a prominent shia leader, said he was reaching out to people from different walks of life, including journalists, lawyers, doctors and teachers, to build a credible political alternative.
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“I am looking for people with no baggage, who have conviction and are willing to walk this path,” he said, adding that the structure and name of any new organisation would be decided later.He said he might contest future by-elections from Srinagar constituency as an independent candidate but insisted his decision to resign was not driven by electoral ambition. “I am not bargaining with people over what I will get in return for resigning. This has nothing to do with electoral results or how people behave. It is a call of conscience and a matter of principles,” he said.
