Game of Politics

Srinagar: Tariq Hameed Karra needs no prompts to speak. Being in an enviable position when he can tell his detractors, ‘I told you so’, Karra minces no words. A founding member of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in 1999 and a long-time friend and associate of late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, Karra quit the party in September 2016 five months after Mufti Sayeed’s daughter, Mehbooba Mufti ascended her father’s position. He is now with Congress party in which he has formed a Kashmir Group with former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as its chairperson.

“The fact that Mehbooba Mufti went to the National Conference yesterday (August 8) to muster support for Article 35A vindicates my stand and exposes her helplessness,” says Karra sitting in his living room, every corner of which is a showcase of Kashmiri craft.

“PDP believed in the inclusive polity of India, in which there was no room for communalism,” he continues. “On those grounds alone, BJP was our natural opponent. How could we be in an alliance with them?” He pits the founding philosophy of the PDP — Kashmir is an unresolved issue which needs to be resolved by talks — against BJP’s avowed g