Srinagar: Former union minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yashwant Sinha today said that centre should immediately clear its stand on Article 35-A of the Indian Constitution, which grants special status to the residents of Jammu and Kashmir.
Meanwhile, four state ministers led by Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu will go to New Delhi today to garner support of the BJP top brass, besides seeking legal support of the central government with regards to defending Article 35-A in the Supreme Court (SC), which has accepted to head a plea questioning the validity of the article.
“People of Jammu and Kashmir are very concerned over the issue and centre should clear its stand,” Mr Sinha, who is here on a three-day visit since August 16 told reporters today.
He said the Jammu and Kashmir government has already filed a reply against the petition challenging the Article in the Supreme Court (SC). “Now it is the duty of the Centre to make its stand clear on the issue as people are very concerned here,” he said.
Mr Sinha, who heads Delhi based Concerned Citizens Group (CCG), had met former chief ministers and opposition National Conference (NC) president and working president Dr Farooq Abdullah and Mr Omar Abdullah here and discussed the overall the political situation in Kashmir valley yesterday.
“Our meetings are the continuation of peace mission that we had started last year,” Mr Sinha told reporters after meeting Abdullahs.
He said that the meeting with Mr Abdullah lasted for an hour in which the prevailing situation was discussed. “We also discussed what the policy and attitude of the government should be for peace in the state,” the senior BJP leader said.
“We have again come here on peace mission and would meet people of different shades to have first hand information of the situation in Valley,” he said.
Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day speech in which he said that ‘bullets and abuses won’t solve Kashmir problem’, he said it has given a hope that things would change for better now.
Mr Sinha has also met Governor N N Vohra besides hold Question-Answer session with students in the frontier district of Kupwara yesterday.
The delegation, comprising of Mr Sinha, Kapil Kak, a former air vice martial, Bharat Bhushan, senior journalist, and Sushobha Barve, head of Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation, is also scheduled to meet members of civil society, mainstream leaders and separatists.
This is their third visit to the valley since 2016 unrest that left over 100 civilians’ dead and thousands others wounded in security force action. The unruly clashes were triggered by the death of Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) commander Burhan Wani on July 8 last year.
An NC spokesman said both Mr Farooq and Mr Omar informed the visiting delegation that open-ended and comprehensive dialogue was the only way forward to ensure peace and reconciliation in the State. “They also reiterated NC’s stand on Article 35-A and the State’s Special Status,” he added.
Mr Omar on Monday lashed out at the BJP, accusing it of taking legal recourse via an NGO to abolish Article 35 A of the Constitution. “The BJP, which realized that it won’t be possible to get special status of the state revoked via Parliament and Assembly, adopted a discreet way to get it scrapped via an NGO in the Supreme Court.” he said while addressing the party’s district and block presidents here at the NC’s headquarters on Monday.
“People from outside the state will come here to settle down. They will take away government jobs at the expense of our children. They will acquire land in the state and they will be speaking a language that won’t be understood by our people because they won’t be speaking Dogri, Gojri, Pahari, Giddi, Kashmiri or other local languages,” Mr Omar said.
Mr Omar has also raised an alarm, alleging that the state government’s defence for protection of the constitutional provision was extremely weak.
Meanwhile, Mr Farooq has warned of a state-wide agitation if the Article 35-A was repealed.
“Do not forget that when the Amarnath Yatra land transfer controversy happened in 2008, people rose overnight. So repealing Article 35A will be far greater revolt. I wonder, whether the government will be able to control that.” he had said.
The NC president had further alleged that the BJP and the RSS have conspired to erode the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.
Meanwhile, in a surprise development, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on August 8 went to meet Mr Farooq to discuss the prevailing political situation in the state.
The Chief Minister even thanked the NC president during her Independence Day speech at Bakshi Stadium here on August 15, stating that Mr Farooq welcomed and advised her like a father.
Mr Mehbooba during her speech said that she was confident that the SC will uphold the special status of the state and reject any attempt to abrogate Article.
The Chief Minister during her visit to New Delhi last month had said that if the Article 35(A) of the constitution is tampered with then nobody in the state will hold the Indian tricolour.
However, the remark didn’t go down very well with her alliance partner in the government BJP. The State unit of the BJP said that while the party stands by the Agenda of Alliance with the PDP and won’t seek alteration of existing constitutional position, “it is equally true that Article 35-A has done more harm to the State than any other provision of law.”
“We are greatly shocked and surprised by the statement of Mehbooba that by challenging Article 35-A, the nationalist forces in the Valley get weakened and that… India will not get a shoulder to carry its national flag in the State,” BJP State spokesperson Virender Gupta had said.
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