That Superannuated
Article 370
The votes that the NDA needs to change the status of Article
370 applied to J&K reside in the Lok Sabha. This is based on the principle
that any Indian constitutional position can be superceded, revoked/changed, either
by a new resolution duly voted in, or perhaps by constitutional amendment, if
called for.
That would, presently, involve 362 votes out of 543,
two-thirds, calculating it on the absolute full strength of the lower house,
rather than the members present. The figure is approximately 30 votes greater
than the strength of the NDA as it stands in this 16th Lok Sabha.
With some good floor management in the Lok Sabha using, for
example, the additional support of Tamil Nadu’s Madame Jayalalithaa, and perhaps a smidgen of
votes from Navin Patnaik’s Orissa. The winning vote, at the end of the debate,
could go very well if the NDA plus is on the same page. And if a joint session
of parliament is called, it could go through on a majority overall, with a
clear two-thirds in the Lok Sabha included.
The ‘consent’ of J&K itself can be obtained in a number
of ways, including a ‘sense of the house’ in the J&K Assembly, combined
with a sense of the street, which, it must be emphasised, includes Jammu and
Ladakh. These regions and their people would like to see a demographic shift,
more ‘Indians’ in the state, able to own property, and invest freely. None of
this is possible while Article 370 subsists, except, of course, by proxy and
using local sponsors.
Both of these regions have felt seriously short-changed by
the State Government for ages. It is a long-standing sense of discrimination
and neglect. Then there is the resentment of the Pandits from the Valley, who
have been more or less expelled to a man, rendering them stateless, with their
property ruthlessly usurped.
This ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Pandits is not only criminal, a
violation of their human rights, unconstitutional, morally wrong, brutally
majoritarian to boot, but absolutely nothing has been done by the State Government
to coax them back or compensate them in any way. This despite the fact that the
J&K Government and people live on Union of India funding, as the state earns very little money on its own,
from tourism, handicrafts and the like.
The inordinate prickliness emanating from the Kashmir Valley
all the time normally ends up obscuring this fact, and lends some credence to
the notion that the main beneficiaries of the Article in question are the
Abdullah family running the National Conference, and the Saeed family running
the rival PDP. They could be the Cabots and the Lodges running post robber-baron
Boston, if one goes by their outraged sense of entitlement alone. And how quick
they have been to condemn the idea of even a discussion to revoke Article 370!
Electorally, BJP and its allies have done well this time in
Jammu and in Ladakh, and must deal with the sense of unfairness and grievance
these regions suffer from. So, this is not quite the open and shut case we are
being asked to accept, with an apparent veto in the hands of Chief Minister
Omar Abdullah. Constitutional experts and legal beagles outside J&K have
very different views from the ones Omar Abdullah is espousing as the only given
one.
They, other legal opinions, jointly and severally, can throw
up quite a few interesting ways to revoke Article 370. The Article was, historically, a fairly
typical Nehruvian folly in the first place, and intended to be ‘temporary’ in
his own write, and as remembered on his recent 50th death anniversary
on the 27th.
But after six decades going on seven, this sense of
‘intended’ transience is probably to be viewed in the broadest philosophical
sense. But what is undeniable is that the excesses caused by the restraints of
this pesky Article are costing the Union of India a lot of money to little
purpose, and over the spending and usage of which it has little control. To add
insult to injury, the separatists in the Valley, the terrorist sympathisers and
helpers, are treated with kid gloves by the state administration.
In addition, the Indian Armed and Paramilitary Forces, the Intelligence
Agencies, have been kept busy securing the border state at enormous expense
while being blamed for ‘excesses’ and ‘false encounters’. They have, in fact,
suffered more casualties in ‘peace-time’ J&K postings, than in all the wars
this country has fought since 1947.
As for the process itself, there is as little to prevent it,
given enough support for it, apart from political noise from NC and PDP. It will be recalled that when Mrs Indira
Gandhi revoked the privy purses of hundreds of hereditary ‘princes’, granted to
them by solemn, irrevocable, sovereign guaranteed treaty; what could they do
about it?
The private banks on their part definitely did not enjoy it
when the self-same Mrs. Gandhi nationalised them either.
So, while changing the status of J&K has important
security implications vis a vis the separatists, Pakistan, possibly China,
Russia, and even the West, just how much fuss should the Union of India really
tolerate from the highly subsidised state apparatus out of Srinagar?
(866 words)
May 28th,
2014
Gautam Mukherjee
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