Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s maternal uncle Mohammad Sartaj Madni resigned as the vice president of the Peoples Democratic Party on Monday. “I have submitted my resignation to Mehbooba Mufti,” Madni told PTI. The leader said he quit in the “larger interests” of the party.

He is a member of the Legislative Council.

Madni and some other leaders of the party have been criticised by dissident party leaders who have alleged that the “coterie of [Mufti’s] close relations have brought the PDP to the present crisis and also cost it power in the state”, IANS reported.

Madni’s resignation comes amid a rebellion in the Peoples Democratic Party, and two weeks after five of its dissenting leaders dismissed Mufti’s claim that they had rebelled at the Centre’s behest.

Mufti had warned the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre against trying to tear her party apart. The BJP walked out of a three-year alliance with the PDP on June 19, leading to the fall of the state government.

Mufti’s statement implied that the “institution of MLA is so corrupt that anyone can buy it”, said legislator Javaid Baig, one of the five leaders on July 13. “Secondly, [her trying to] label [us as] puppets is to put us in front a lynch mob,” he said at a press conference in Srinagar. “This can put our families at risk, workers at risk. Our lives have been put at risk.”

Baig made the remarks at a press conference along with legislators Imran Ansari, Majeed Padder, Yasir Reshi and Safuddin Bhat.

Madni had lost the 2014 elections from Devsar Assembly constituency in South Kashmir’s Kulgam district to Mohammad Amin Bhat of the Congress.

Dissenting Peoples Democratic Party legislators have criticised the “two-family system” of power in Jammu and Kashmir. The Mufti and the Abdullah families have, barring the periods of governor’s rule, have headed all but one government in the state since 1986.