Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Feb 22: Noted thinker and academician, Prof Amitabh Mattoo, who was Advisor to then Chief Ministers Mufti Mohd Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti , today announced his dissociation from People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
“I do not belong to the PDP, nor do I belong to any other Party. I feel I have enough agency as an independent thinker to be able to express my views, make them heard, sometimes to the point of threatening the establishment as an intellectual gadfly; an infant terrible,” he said in a post on his facebook account.
In the `introspective’ post on his past foray into J&K politics, Prof Mattoo claimed that he never belonged to PDP and his relationship with the party was based on his relationship with founder Patron Mufti Mohd Sayeed. ” Mufti Sahib, as I have often said, was the last teacher I had and he had greater faith in his student often more than I had in myself,” he said and recalled how Mufti Sayeed foretold his fate as Advisor.
” I should have left the day he passed away; but I stayed on perhaps only to learn how important it is to be true to yourself and the more you shed in terms of baggage, the more you gain in freedom,” Prof Mattoo said and added that he saw Mufti Sayeed’s forcasts play out in real life as most of his aphorisms about people and politics came true.
In an indirect attack on Mehbooba Mufti and virtually raising a question mark on her leadership qualities, Prof Mattoo has quoted Milan Kundera’s saying in his post: ” But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave”.
Prof Mattoo also claimed that he had let Mehbooba Mufti know of his decision many weeks ago and she accepted her decision as an academic rather than another politician.
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