Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir People’s Conference (JKPC) said on Thursday (May 21) that its chairman and Handwara legislator Sajad Lone has been placed under house arrest on the death anniversary of his father and party founder Abdul Ghani Lone.The party said that restrictions has also been imposed on other senior leaders and workers, alleging that many of them were not allowed to visit the martyrs graveyard in downtown Srinagar to pay tributes to the party founder on his 24th death anniversary.Some photos shared by the party on its X handle show a spool of concertina wire spread across the main gate of ‘VIP 4’ cottage in Srinagar’s Church Lane, a government-owned lodge where the JKPC chairman lives along with his family.A J&K police vehicle can also be seen in the photos blocking the access to the cottage with some uniformed personnel inside the vehicle.“Preventing us from paying homage to a leader remembered for his political vision and sacrifice is unfortunate, undemocratic and deeply insensitive. Such actions hurt public sentiments and weaken democratic values,” the party statement said while condemning the house arrest.Abdul Ghani Lone was assassinated by terrorists on May 21, 2002 during a rally organised by the Hurriyat Conference to pay tributes to Mirwaiz Moulvi Mohammad Farooq, father of Kashmir’s chief cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who was gunned down in a similar fashion on the same day 12 years earlier.Lone, who is survived by two sons and a daughter, is buried at the Shaheed Mazaar (martyrs graveyard) in the downtown Eidgah of Srinagar.It is for the first time that Lone, who referred to prime minister Narendra Modi as his elder brother in 2014, has been prevented from visiting his father’s grave.He was among several mainstream political leaders including three former chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir who were kept under preventive detention in the aftermath of the reading down of Article 370 in 2019.In 2015, Lone was inducted as a minister in the People’s Democratic Party-Bharatiya Janta Party coalition government led by late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed on the BJP quota.Later that year, he was awarded the Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Award by India Foundation, a think tank linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In a statement, the organisers had said that Lone “embodies the values espoused by” the late Dr Mukherjee.Earlier this year, Lone became the first mainstream politician from the Union territory to openly advocate for the separation of Kashmir valley from Jammu region, a demand which has been made by some J&K and BJP leaders, but rejected by the party’s central leadership.“Maybe [the] time has come for an amicable divorce. It is not only about developmental matters. Jammu has become the proverbial stick to beat the Kashmiri with. I think the people of Kashmir too can’t take it anymore,” he said in the statement in January this year.