Srinagar: A day after state’s Finance Minister Haseeb A Drabu was pulled up by his party over his remarks on Kashmir saying that ‘Kashmir is not a political problem’, the party has decided to shunt him out of the ministry.

Sources in the government said that PDP has decided to drop finance minister Haseeb Drabu from the council of minister over his remarks.

Sources said the PDP shot a letter to Raj Bhavan informing the governor NN Vohra about the decision.

Speaking at an event themed Kashmir: the way forward’ on Friday last, Drabu asked the people to introspect over the nature and origins of the situation in the state and how it can be resolved.

We need to talk to ourselves before we talk to others and this must happen nationally as well, he said.

The PDP leader said there was a dire need to include concerns of the people of the state and not to get lost in the forest of symbols”.

“Don’t see J&K as a conflict state and a political issue, it is a society which has social issues right now. We are trying to find our own space and we are going through a process which many other countries are also going through, Drabu said.

It (J&K) is not a political issue as far as I can see. They have been barking up the wrong tree for the last 50 or 70 years by talking about the politics of it, that the political situation has never improved.

We seriously need to look at in terms of how it is a society that is in search for itself, he said at the event organised by the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Around 130 ambassadors, government officials and business leaders attended the event.

Drabu made a passionate appeal to both the domestic and overseas investors to include Jammu and Kashmir in their investment agenda and help uplift the state’s economic growth.

We may be living unhappy lives. Our history may be torturous, but we run profitable businesses….

We have done our bit, but somehow the world bypassed us or we let it bypass us and we got into a bit of a quandary.

That quandary needs to be resolved in some way for us to be able to catch up with the rest of the world, he said.

Guest