NEW DELHI -- Five months after he quit the People's Democratic Party (PDP), MP Tariq Hameed Karra on Saturday joined the Congress party. He attacked the central government for "mishandling" the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.
Addressing reporters at the Congress party headquarters, Karra said: "When we floated PDP in 1999, our basic declaration was against fascist forces and how we should take the state out of slumber."
"But after the 2014 assembly elections, the PDP, which had sought votes against (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi's polarization politics, joined hands with him," he said.
"That decision forced me to distance myself from the party," Karra said.
He also said that he tried to distance himself from the PDP even when the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was Chief Minister. "I had started giving them warnings and suggestions," he said.
"I had told them it is not in the interest of the state and Indian polity that we give space to such people and such parties who have been engaged, since pre-Independence, in putting the social fabric of the country into jeopardy," he said.
He also accused the central government of mishandling the situation in the state in 2016 and said: "When the unrest started in Kashmir in 2016 BJP-PDP in connivance mishandled the situation and people of the state."
"They jailed people, they killed people and even blinded the children," he alleged.
"Thus my conscious did not allow me to remain in the PDP and I resigned," he said.
Karra resigned from the party on 16 September, 2016.
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