Srinagar, May 15: One of the best-kept secrets of Kashmir’s “grand political family” is out.

National Conference president Omar Abdullah, in his newly launched blog (http://jknc.org/blog/), has leaked the secret about an “uncle” who, because of his opposition to Kashmir’s accession to India, has refused to be associated with anything “Indian”.

“I have an uncle who more often than not I disagree with but I admire the conviction he has — he disagrees with what happened in 1947 and subsequent events and so refuses to carry a passport,” Omar writes in his blog.

“He has never applied for one. For the longest time he never left the state and only travelled by road between Jammu and Srinagar because he refused to travel on ‘Indian’ Airlines.”

The young leader would not name the “uncle”, but party sources said the person being referred to is Sheikh Nazir Ahmad, general secretary of the National Conference. Ahmad, 70, is the nephew of National Conference leader Sheikh Abdullah and was raised by him as his son.

The “secret” is known to Ahmad’s associates and many others, but the family has for the first time come on record about it, that too in election year.

In private conversations, Ahmad would not like to be quoted on this. But with his nephew coming on record, he is willing to court a controversy.

“All he has written is true. I call Jammu and Kashmir my country and even Sheikh Sahib (Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah) would call it my country. I did not move out of it (my country) for at least the last 25 years,” he said. “We were fighting for Naya Kashmir. You can also write that even Hari Singh (the last Dogra ruler) never wanted to go with India and wanted to have an independent country.”