National Conference (NC) district presidents, Youth National Conference (YNC), legal cell, women’s wing, and minority wing on Monday said that the attaching the properties of NC President and Member of Parliament Farooq Abdullah by the Enforcement Directorate was “vengeful”.
In a joint statement, they condemned the measure of attaching the three-time chief minister’s properties as “rancorous” and “coercive”.
Calling the ED’s targeting of NC President “symbolic of the repugnance which the ruling BJP nurtures for opposition leaders”, the party wings and district presidents said such acts were nothing but “unwarranted” and “unjustified”.
The statement quoted them as saying that there was no evidence worth the name on the record to justify the order of the attachment of the property.
“The ancestral properties had been acquired decades back, and there is no justification of the measure,” they said in the statement. “It is nothing except political vendetta and an attempt to silence the leadership and dissuade it from voicing support to the political aspirations of the people of Kashmir, Ladakh and Jammu.”
They said that the list of properties includes two ancestral properties in which the NC president has a minor share.
“It reveals the desperation of the BJP which is using its agencies to settle political scores,” the joint statement quoted them as saying.
They said that the sudden move against the Member of Parliament had been taken to divert attention from the ground that BJP seems to be losing in J&K.
“It is not a coincidence that BJP ordered this action on the day 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,” they said in the statement.
They said that the party rank and file stands with the NC president and that such “coercive” and “spiteful” measures would not “dampen the spirits of the party”.