At 2:40 on Tuesday afternoon, in a park in Budgam, Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi picked up a pen and signed what he called the document of his freedom. “From today onwards, at 2:40 pm, I am no longer a part of the National Conference,” he told the crowd gathered at Behisht-e-Zehra Park, according to Frontline. With that one signature, Srinagar lost its MP, the ruling National Conference lost its most prominent internal critic, and Jammu and Kashmir politics gained a question nobody can yet answer: what does Ruhullah do next?
The resignation was twofold. Ruhullah resigned from the Lok Sabha, sending his letter to Speaker Om Birla, and quit the National Conference, ending a 24-year association with the party, The Tribune and News18 reported. He handed the party copy of his resignation not to a party office bearer but to Muhammad Ashraf Mattoo, whose teenage son Tufail Mattoo was killed in 2010, when Omar Abdullah was chief minister. That choice of messenger was the speech in miniature. It said what the words said: this was about 2010, about promises, and about a legacy he claims the party has walked away from.
## Why Ruhullah resigns now
The timing was deliberate. November 3 was the 26th death anniversary of his father, Aga Syed Mehdi Mustafa, a prominent Shia leader assassinated in an IED blast in Budgam in 2000. Ruhullah chose his father’s anniversary to announce the break, and the symbolism was not lost on anyone in the park.
The reasons, as he stated them, were ideological. Ruhullah accused Chief Minister Omar Abdullah of diluting the party’s stand on Article 370 and the restoration of statehood, and of speaking, in his words, “the language that the BJP wanted people to speak,” The Quint reported, citing The Indian Express. He said he had sought clarity from party president Farooq Abdullah on Article 370 and concluded the party no longer believed in its original ideology. News18 reported that reservations and unkept electoral promises were also part of his charge sheet.
Here is the detail that makes this more than one man’s exit. Four days before Ruhullah resigned, on October 30, as many as 25 National Conference legislators had voiced their own grievances with the party leadership, Frontline reported. Ruhullah is the loudest voice to walk out, but he is not the only unhappy one inside the party. A resignation from one MP can be managed. A resignation on top of a legislators’ revolt looks like a pattern, and patterns are what unsettle governments.
## A break 24 years in the making
Ruhullah, 48, is not a newcomer who drifted in and out. He is a Shia cleric from Budgam who became a three-time MLA and won the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat in 2024 with around 3.56 lakh votes, defeating PDP candidate Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra by a margin of 1.88 lakh votes, according to The Hindu and Deccan Herald. He rose as an ideological voice inside the party after the Centre revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special status in August 2019, and he has been its most persistent internal dissenter since.
That history is why the manner of his exit matters as much as the exit itself. He did not slip out with a quiet letter. He announced it at an 80-minute rally, on his father’s anniversary, in his hometown, in front of supporters holding his posters. He also hinted at forming a new political movement, The Tribune reported, saying Jammu and Kashmir would engage with Delhi on its own terms. He stopped short of naming a party. The hint, though, was the point. It tells his supporters there is somewhere to go, and it tells the National Conference that this resignation might be a beginning rather than an end.
## What it does to Omar Abdullah’s government
The immediate consequence is procedural: Srinagar’s Lok Sabha seat falls vacant and a by-election will follow. The political consequence is heavier. The National Conference is the ruling party in Jammu and Kashmir, and it now faces its biggest internal crisis since taking office, with its Srinagar MP gone and a chunk of its legislators openly unhappy. The party has scheduled a press conference on November 4 to present its counter, Frontline reported, so its response will come fast. Watch what it says about Article 370, because that is the ground Ruhullah chose to fight on, and it is ground the party cannot afford to sound vague about twice.
The resignation also lands in a Delhi week already thick with arguments about democracy and voter rolls. Home Minister Amit Shah has said the government is willing to convene a special Parliament session on the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, and the opposition’s voter-roll campaign filled Delhi’s streets at the weekend, as our earlier coverage of the [INDIA bloc rally](https://auindia.in/news/india-bloc-delhi-rally-bjp-counter-march) and the bloc’s [public impeachment of the CEC](https://auindia.in/news/india-bloc-public-impeachment-cec-delhi) reported. Ruhullah’s complaint is different in substance, it is about Kashmir’s promises rather than the rolls, but it feeds the same mood: elected representatives accusing institutions and parties of drifting from what voters were promised.
So what happens now? The honest answer is that nobody knows, including, probably, Ruhullah himself beyond the next step. If he floats a new party, Srinagar’s by-election becomes its first test, and the National Conference will have to fight a seat it held with a candidate who knows its organisation from the inside. If he does not, his resignation still stands as the sharpest public verdict yet on Omar Abdullah’s government from within its own camp. Either way, a man who spent 24 years inside the National Conference has decided his freedom is worth more than his seat. Kashmir politics rarely produces a sentence that clean. The next few weeks will show whether it was a farewell or a launch.