Political Vendetta, Says National Conference on ED Attaching Farooq Abdullah’s Properties
After the Enforcement Directorate (ED) attached six properties worth Rs 11.86 crore of former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah, the National Conference on Saturday called it a “political vendetta and an attempt to silence the leadership”.
The ED today attached the properties of Farooq Abdullah in connection with a probe into the Jammu and Kashmir Cricket association case, sources said. “We have attached six properties of Abdullah in which three are residential buildings while two are plots,” news agency IANS quoted an ED source as saying. The properties have been attached under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the report added.
The National Conference leaders said that such acts against Farooq Abdullah were nothing but “unwarranted and unjustified”. “There is no evidence worth the name on record to justify the order of attachment of the property. These ancestral assets had been acquired decades back, and there is no justification why these should be attached. It is nothing except political vendetta and an attempt to silence the leadership and dissuade it from voicing support to political aspirations of the people of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh,” senior National Conference leaders, including two sitting MPs Mohammad Akbar Lone and Hasnain Masoodi, said in a joint statement.
The leaders, who also included party general secretary Ali Muhammad Sagar and provincial presidents Nasir Aslam Wani and Devender Singh Rana and several former ministers, lambasted what they called “the series of attacks on the party leadership”.
“The list of properties include two ancestral properties in which Farooq Abdullah has a minor share. It reveals the desperation of the BJP which is using its agencies to settle political scores,” the leaders further said.
“The sudden move against Farooq Abdullah has been taken to divert attention from the ground that BJP seems to be losing in Jammu and Kashmir,” the leaders said, adding, “It’s not a coincidence that the BJP ordered this action on the day the DDC polls ended because they know how badly they have fared and are now extracting their revenge in advance of the drubbing they will receive at the hands of people of Jammu and Kashmir.”
