Govt ‘doesn’t even spare senior citizens’: PDP chief’s mother gets ED summons

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti said on Tuesday that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned her mother over “unknown charges”.

“On the day PDP chose not to meet the Delimitation Commission, ED sent a summon to my mother to appear in person for unknown charges. In its attempt to intimidate political opponents, the government of India doesn’t even spare senior citizens. Agencies like the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and ED are now its tools to settle scores,” the People’s Democratic Party president wrote on Twitter.

Mufti’s allegations come on a day the delimitation commission, headed by former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai, arrived in Srinagar to hold talks on the ongoing process of carving out new constituencies in the region. Earlier in the day, the PDP wrote to Desai stating they won’t attend the exercise, which, the party alleged, was “pre-planned” and aimed at “disempowering” the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

Also read: PDP refuses to meet delimitation panel, calls it a preplanned move

On June 24, Mufti, who is being investigated by the ED in connection with an alleged money laundering case, was part of a delegation of political leaders from the Valley who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi for the first dialogue between the Union government and Jammu and Kashmir politicians since the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019.

In the meeting, Prime Minister Modi is believed to have assured the leaders that the Centre is “committed” to granting statehood to Jammu and Kashmir, which, in 2019, was bifurcated into the Union territories of J&K, and Ladakh.