After months of speculation, member of parliament from Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency and senior National Conference leader Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi has confirmed he will resign from both the party and Parliament in November.
“I have decided to resign from the party and Parliament in November,” Mehdi said as per a report by The Decifer.
Mehdi shared the decision with close aides earlier this week, one of them confirmed, saying he plans to step down both as MP for the Srinagar constituency and as a member of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference.
Earlier Mehdi had told The Decifer that he has made up his mind to resign from the party soon, accusing its leadership of choosing a “path of surrender”.
Since the Narendra Modi government scrapped Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status in August 2019 and downgraded the erstwhile state into a Union territory, Mehdi has consistently advocated for the restoration of special status and greater autonomy. His party, however, has primarily focused on securing the restoration of statehood.
Mehdi has been stressing on the party leadership to change its course of action and address people’s issues, primarily demanding the restoration of special status.
Last week, JKNC president Farooq Abdullah had dared the Srinagar MP to resign from the Lok Sabha and seek a fresh mandate from the electorate. “If you think people voted for you, resign and go back to them. We will see how many votes you get,” Abdullah had said.
Reacting to this statement, Mehdi had said that it is not possible that “Doctor Sahib asks me for something and I don’t give it to him. It is not possible that I send him back empty-handed,” he said.
“He has asked for something at this age. I respect him. I don’t want him to ask me for something, and I return it to him empty-handed… I will answer in a few days,” he said.
The divergence between Mehdi and the National Conference leadership has widened over the years, with the Srinagar MP repeatedly taking positions that have put him at odds with his party. Since NC returned to power in Jammu and Kashmir in 2024 with a majority mandate, Mehdi has continued to publicly question the government’s approach on the restoration of statehood and implementation of the party’s manifesto.
Mehdi has been criticising the NC’s focus on statehood, arguing that the party had moved away from its earlier position on restoring the constitutional protections and guarantees that Jammu and Kashmir had under Article 370. “The rights that were snatched from us, the protections, the constitutional guarantees which were given to us through Article 370 and were snatched from us is our objective and we will fight for that,” he had said.
In an interview, he had said that in this kind of a situation “when you want to betray the mandate and betray the trust and go away from the line you committed to, you can’t tolerate a person who asks for accountability. He becomes an irritant. In that sense, I meant that I’m not needed.”
