Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 24: Former Minister and senior Congress leader Abdul Majid Wani today criticised the RSS agenda of fiddling with the basic structure of J&K State by raising controversies over Art 35-A and article 370 of Indian Constitution which are basic threads binding J&K people with rest of India.
“It was great visionary rulers of J&K Maharaja Pratap Singh and his successor Maharaja Hari Singh who enacted laws safeguarding the interests of permanent residents of J&K State, barring non-permanent residents of the State from purchasing and owning any immovable property in the State. He had a great vision behind this, thus safeguarding invaluable natural assets and natural resources of our State from becoming personal properties of British people as well as those rich people from other princely states of India. The idea was also to safeguard demography of our state which is rich in local ethnic cultures. Later, senior leaders at Center as well as in state like Jawaharlal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah also realised importance for safeguarding rights of citizens of J&K,” Wani added.
” While the Constitution of India was adopted in 1950, the Constituent Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir was yet to finalise the State Constitution. In order to define and delineate the constitutional relationship of J&K with the Union of India, an agreement was arrived at between the representatives of the State and the Union in the year 1952 which is commonly known as the `Delhi Agreement’. In this agreement, it was agreed that the “state subject” laws framed by Maharaja Hari Singh in 1927 and 1932 will continue. The said agreement was discussed and approved by the State Constituent Assembly in August 1952. It was also approved by the Rajya Sabha in August 1952. To formalise and further safeguard the “state subject” law and not to make it constitutionally vulnerable, the President of India issued an order on May 14, 1954 which, among other things added Article 35-A to the Constitution,” Wani maintained.
He further said that Article 35A was included in the Constitution, not as an afterthought but after mature consideration by the Constitution-makers. It was a condition of Kashmir’s accession to India and if that accession is sacrosanct, the condition must also be sacrosanct.
The current status is based on the “Instrument of Accession” signed by the then ruler of the state, Maharajah Hari Singh, with the Government of India. On the terms and conditions of the Instrument of Accession, the state was accorded special constitutional relationship. If article 35A is abrogated, it’ll be a major blunder and might result into reversal of J&K state going back to pre- 1950 position, he added.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel