In another setback to PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, 11 PDP leaders and their supporters on Tuesday joined the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri district. J-K BJP president Ravinder Raina inducted the PDP leaders into the saffron party. Those who joined the BJP are PDP zonal president Sukhdev Singh; Subedar Gian Chand; Prithvi Raj Khokhar; Capt Ram Lal Choudhary; Bhagwan Dass; Tara Chand, Bachan Singh; Ajay Choudhary; Mohinder Singh; Sushil Kumar; and Dr Shadi Lal.
Apart from the 11 leaders, hundreds of their supporters too joined the BJP. Stating that PDP is now a “sunken ship”, Ravinder Raina welcomed them into the party fold. The fallout of Mehbooba Mufti’s contentious remarks about the tricolour continued and it has completely lost the faith of the public as well as its leaders.
This development comes 10 days after senior PDP leader Dr.Ramzan Hussain quit PDP. He joined BJP along with his supporters at the party’s headquarters in Srinagar. Hussain had unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Assembly polls from the Bani constituency as a BSP candidate before joining PDP. Stressing that the people of J&K are very optimistic about the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he opined that the region is on the right track towards peace and development.