Sister takes on Abdullah

SRINAGAR: From kitchen to politics, Khalida Shah, the 73-year-old estranged sister of National Conference (NC) patron Farooq Abdullah, has come a long way to take on the first political family of Jammu and Kashmir.

Breaking her 24-year-old self-imposed hibernation, Khailda has jumped the poll bandwagon to campaign for the Awami National Conference (ANC) in central Kashmir.

The ANC is contesting 68 seats in the 87-member house. However, Khalida is not contesting any seat and will be only campaigning for the party.

She and her family had broken all ties with Abdullahs in 1984 when her husband, GM Shah, engineered a coup and split the National Conference, which led to the fall of the Farooq’s government.

Shah later named the NC rebel group as the ANC and became chief minister with the support of the Congress for a brief period. Shah and his wife were seen last with Farooq when his mother Begum Akbar Jehan passed away a few years ago. Shah and his family had visited Farooq to condole her death.

Now, Khalida is trying to revive her late father Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s magic to regain the lost ground in Kashmir. “I am pained to see the plight of the people. Time has come when you should differentiate between good and bad, truth and evil,” she told people while addressing a poll rally at Chadoora.

h_ishfaq@dnaindia.net