Perturbed over by repeated threats of a probe into his properties by t Himachal Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Prem Kumar Dhumal on Sunday sought an immediate enquiry by the CBI or a sitting Judge of the Supreme Court about the personal wealth of all surviving former Chief Ministers of the hill State.
To settle the matter for once and all, he said, the enquiry should come out with the details of properties acquired by these Chief Ministers, including himself, before and after they became the heads of the government here. He said the hill State had only seen five Chief Ministers so far and the first two, Dr. Yashwant Singh Parmar and Ram Lal Thakur are no more. The properties of surviving three, Mr. Shanta Kumar, Virbhadra Singh and himself should be thoroughly enquired and made public.
Mr. Dhumal while blaming Mr. Virbhadra Singh for time and again raising this issue said a similar attempt was made during the Vidhan Sabha elections of 2003 by three senior Congress leaders. One out of them, the then Chief Minister of neighbouring Punjab, Capt. Amrinder Singh has cleared that he had made no allegations and had made a written apology in the court. The other two leaders Moti Lal Vohra and Anand Sharma were facing the defamation cases in the court, he said.
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He said Mr. Virbhadra Singh had now sent a list of some properties (which he had not even heard of) to the Vigilance ADGP and doing a constant propaganda against him and his family, which was highly offensive and unacceptable.
Mr. Dhumal who also attached a copy of the list of alleged properties given by this advocate, requested the Prime Minister to take an affidavit by this lawyer and be handed over to the enquiry officer.