Author: Arun Joshi
Publication: Hindustan Times
Date: August 24, 2008
URL: http://hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=&id=aa3864ba-4dbc-4c82-a1e3-510c2f9c8080
The People's Democratic Party (PDP) has decided
to expel its founder and former deputy chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir
Muzaffar Hussain Baig from the party, PDP sources said on Saturday.
The party was unhappy with the way Baig handled
the controversial land diversion to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board during
the state cabinet meeting in May 2008. He kept the "party leadership
in the dark," the sources said.
Baig was also the law minister in the coalition
government.
It is learnt that at an all-party meeting
in New Delhi, Baig had given in writing that the PDP approved of the proposed
draft on the land transfer. He did this without taking the party leadership
into confidence.
"The People's Democratic Party today
made it clear that only the party president Mehbooba Mufti is authorised to
put forth the party's point of view at any forum, official or unofficial,
on how to defuse the present crisis facing the state, a PDP spokesman said.
Reiterating the party's stand on how to defuse
the present crisis, the spokesman quoting the party president said that before
arriving at any decision, the "government must take all sections of the
Kashmiri society, including the newly constituted Kashmir Coordination Committee
into confidence.
