SRI NAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Monday sacked Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu for his statement that Kashmir was not a political issue.
Sources said Mehbooba, after consultations with party leaders in Jammu, wrote a letter to Governor N N Vohra requesting him to drop Drabu from the Council of Ministers with immediate effect.
All the PDP leaders were unanimously in favour of sacking Drabu for his statement in New Delhi, the sources added.
“J&K is not a political issue as far as I can see. They have been barking up the wrong tree for last 50 or 70 years by talking about the politics of it; that the political situation has never improved. We seriously need to look at in terms of how it is a society that is in search for itself,” Drabu had said at an event organised by the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry in New Delhi last Friday.
Education Minister Altaf Bukhari, senior PDP leader and MP Muzaffar Hussain Baig and Works Minister Naeem Akhtar are being seen as frontrunners for the position vacated by Drabu.
But PDP sources said for the time being, the CM would be keeping the finance portfolio with herself.
Drabu was the main architect of the PDP-BJP alliance in the state after the 2014 Assembly elections. He is said to be close to BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, who is party’s point man in Kashmir.