Tribune News Service
New Delhi, August 5
As the BJP-led NDA government abolished the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, legal experts said the decision was in accordance with provisions of the Constitution and it can withstand any possible legal challenge.
“Constitutionally speaking, the government is perfectly within its rights to end the special status of Jammu and Kashmir as Article 370 itself empowered the Executive to repeal or modify the provision. They are not required to follow the Article 368 route generally used to amend the Constitution,” senior advocate and former Additional Solicitor General Vikas Singh told The Tribune.
Singh recalled how the Rajiv Gandhi government had in 1986 extended Article 249 to Jammu and Kashmir. He said Article 370(3) empowered the President to declare that the Article shall cease to operate or shall be operative only with such exceptions and modifications and from such date as he may specify.
On the issue of bifurcation of the state into two union territories – Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, Singh said under Article 3 of the Constitution, Parliament had powers to do so and Article 4 made it clear that alteration of boundaries of existing states or creation of a new state of a union territory can be done by a simple majority in both Houses of Parliament.
Constitutional expert Rakesh Dwivedi, too, didn’t find any fault with the government’s decision. Terming it “historic” move, Dwivedi said Article 35-A was a discriminatory provision as it allowed the Jammu and Kashmir assembly to define “permanent resident” of the state and gave them special rights and privileges since 1954.
He said even creation of two union territories by dividing the state was right it was Parliament’s powers under Article 3 of the Constitution to create a new state or union territories can’t be questioned.
Dwivedi said, “The logic of protecting state subjects or permanent residents was fallacious. Kashmir had never closed its doors to outsiders. Closed-doorism is foreign to its culture. Kashmir has been a cradle where Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam all found place to thrive.”
Article 370 was never intended to create a partial accession or to perpetuate Instrument of Accession based autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir forever. They were intended to permanently unite the state in an indestructible Union, Dwivedi added.
Former attorney general Soli Sorabjee said “nothing revolutionary has been done”. Laws not applicable to the state so far will now be applicable, he said referring to earlier provisions of Article 370, which provided that state assembly had the power to enforce or not enforce the central law in Jammu and Kashmir.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/2GOtAEP
via Today’s News Headlines
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