Ex-Srinagar mayor Junaid Azim Mattu quits Apni Party

Srinagar, Aug 28 (PTI) Former Srinagar Municipal Corporation mayor Junaid Azim Mattu resigned from the Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party on Wednesday.

“It is with a heavy heart, and with all humility at my command, that I announce my decision to part ways with the J&K Apni Party. I extend my gratitude to our President Syed Muhammad Altaf Bukhari Sahab and my colleagues and wish them well,” Mattu said in a post on X.

Mattu, who changed three parties in the past six years, did not spell out his future plans.

He entered politics by joining the People’s Conference led by Sajad Gani Lone in 2009. He served as the party’s spokesperson before quitting it in 2013 for the National Conference. He left the NC in 2018.

He rejoined the People’s Conference and became the mayor of Srinagar Municipal Corporation with the help of the BJP in 2018. Mattu left the PC to join the Apni Party in 2020.

“During my Hajj pilgrimage earlier this year, I had taken a solemn pledge to uphold my conviction and do a politics guided by my own principles and a sense of discerning the right from the wrong,” Mattu said in the post.

He said one should not criticise the party one has been a part of but “my own convictions are no longer congruent or symmetrical with the ideology of the party and in this situation to still remain associated with the party or to contest elections as a party candidate would be outrightly disingenuous”.

He said the Apni party is now at liberty to field an appropriate candidate from Zadibal in his place.