Panchkula, May 19 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court on Monday sought responses from former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Associated Journals Limited (AJL) on a plea moved by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) challenging the closure of money laundering proceedings against the Congress leader and the firm in a 2005 prime institutional plot re-allotment case. A special Panchkula ED court on April 3 had closed the proceedings after a February 25 judgment by the high court which quashed criminal charges against Hooda and AJL in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case. The ED probe was based on the CBI case into the same controversy. The property allotted to AJL in 1982 was reclaimed in 1992 because AJL did not comply with the allotment conditions. Allegations are that when Hooda became chief minister in 2005, he allowed the re-allotment of the plot to AJL at old rates. At the time the CBI FIR was registered, the late Moti Lal Vora was the chairman of AJL and Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul were among the shareholders. Vora's name was dropped from the proceedings after his death. The newspaper was launched in 1938 by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister. The directorate filed a prosecution complaint before the Panchkula trial court on August 26, 2019, and it took note on September 26, 2019, summoning Hooda as an accused. The initial FIR was registered by the state vigilance in May 2016 and the CBI took over the investigation in 2017 during the BJP regime for the alleged offences of 2005, when the Congress leader was the chief minister in the state. The CBI filed a chargesheet in December 2018 indicting Hooda and AJL and a special CBI court in Panchkula had framed charges against both in 2021 under Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The ED in its plea said it has a "very strong prime facie case and in all probability is likely to succeed". The trial court failed to consider that the offence under money laundering is an independent offence not dependent upon any orders passed in respect of the scheduled offence. While closing the proceedings, the trial court gave liberty to revive the case. However, this is not a sufficient protection as the attached properties worth Rs 64 crore are sought to be released which would cause "irreparable injury" to the lager public interest and ED in the eventuality the predicate offence case is revived. It has also argued that once the issue is pending consideration before a superior court, the lower court should await the decision of the superior court and hence, the impugned order deserves to be set aside. Th CBI has also challenged the high court order in the Supreme Court in which notices were issued to Hooda and AJL. The high court bench of justice Tribhuvan Dahiya has sought a response by July 8....