by Tahir Bhat
SRINAGAR: Three former Peoples Democratic Party leaders including two former Rajya Sabha members, Nazir Laway and Mir Mohammad Fayaz, are likely to join the Peoples Conference tomorrow at an event being organised at the Church Lane residence of party chairman Sajad Gani Lone.
As per party sources, Laway, who resigned from the PDP would join along with his former party colleagues Mir Mohammad Fayaz and Safina Baig.
Interestingly, Safina’s husband Muzzafar Hussain Baig was thrown out by PC in June this year after the all party meeting of the Prime Minister in which Baig was reported to have told the meeting that he wasn’t a member of any political outfit.
Baig’s statement had landed the couple in trouble with PC mulling to initiate a no-confidence motion against Safina in the District Development Council Baramulla which she heads with the party’s support.
However, rapprochement with the party had saved Safina’s position in the council.
Meanwhile, Mir Mohammad Fayaz from Kupwara, who lost the 2014 assembly polls to PC’s Bashir Ahmad Dar by a very thin margin, is also expected to join the party tomorrow. He completed his term on PDP’s mandate in the upper house of parliament earlier this year in February.
Fayaz’s entry would bring the former rivals into the same party’s fold turning the Kupwara assembly segment into a fight between the National Conference leader Mir Saifullah and the PC leaders.
Laway, who hails from south Kashmir’s Kulgam district, had also lost the 2014 assembly polls to CPIM State Secretary Muhammad Yousuf Tarigami by a thin margin. Subsequently, PDP had nominated Laway to the parliament.
Earlier this year, Laway and Fayaz were seen in a rally together in Kupwara organised at the end of their Rajya Sabha terms.
Sources in the party said that a leader from Pir Panjal’s Poonch district is also expected to join the party tomorrow.
PC had walked out of the Peoples Alliance for Gupkar Declaration citing infighting within the amalgam which was formed to bring back the pre-August 5 status of Jammu and Kashmir.
