STATE TIMES NEWS
SRINAGAR: Former chairman of the Hurriyat Conference and influential Shia leader Maulana Abbas Ansari, considered a dove among the separatist hawks, died here on Tuesday. He was 86.
“Maulana (Ansari) breathed his last at his Nawakadal residence in the old city on Tuesday morning,” a relative of the deceased leader said.
He said Ansari was not keeping well for the past couple of months and was hospitalized for some time in September. Ansari was the last chairman of the undivided Hurriyat Conference which split into two factions soon after his election as the head of the separatist amalgam in 2003.
It was during the tenure of Ansari as the chairman of the separatist amalgam that the moderate faction — which included the likes of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Professor Abdul Gani Bhat and Bilal Gani Lone — entered into talks with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
