‘If Article 370 is tempered’, I will unite Geelani, Omar, Mehbooba and protest at Lal Chowk: Saifuddin Soz

SRINAGAR, (PTK): With the hearing on the constitutional validity of Article 35A at the Supreme Court likely this week, Senior Congress leader and former union minister Prof  Saifuddin Soz on Monday said that Kashmir’s relation with union will be severed if Article 370 is repelled.

Soz said that if Article 370 is tempered, he will unite with former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, Omar Abdullah, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and will protest at Kashmir’s Lal Chowk Zee News reported.

“It is not known that why this strong military force has been deployed in the valley of Kashmir. Locals of Kashmir get shocked seeing military forces around them. And if Article 370 is repelled by the court, Kashmir’s relation with union will also get severed. RSS is keen to scrap Articles 35A and 370 from Kashmir and so has approached the Supreme Court,” Soz said.

“RSS has already caused a lot of damage to the country. Who is at Supreme Court presently? RSS. Who has filed the petition on Article 35? RSS. This is not going to give any benefit in 2019? There will be a chaos in 2019. The government will change in 2019 (after the Lok Sabha elections). And now, the RSS has approached the court to get Article 370 scrapped from Kashmir. This will severe the relationship between the state and the union,” Soz said.

Training his gun towards the Narendra Modi-led government in Centre, Soz said, “Our relationship is with secular India. Relationships cannot be established with the haters. So much has been damaged in the last four years and no further expectations lie ahead.”

“Today, main stream and Hurriyat are on the same page and issue can be resolved through dialogues. Did the government speak to anyone? Our and our children’ lives are now based on what the government at Centre plans to do about Kashmir. Modi spoke his mind through ‘Mann Ki Baat’ but he did not bother to listen others. So far, what has he done for people of Kashmir. During his tenure as the Prime Minister, causalties suffered by security forces in violence has been the highest. This is a political issue and the solution should be political,” he said.

The Supreme Court is said to begin hearing on Article 35A from February 26-28 and it has led to a lot of anxiety in the Valley.

Article 35A was added to the Constitution as a testimony of the special consideration the Indian government accorded to the ‘permanent residents’ of Jammu and Kashmir.

Article 35A gives special rights to the Jammu and Kashmir’s permanent residents. It prohibits people from outside the state from buying or owning immovable property, settles permanently, or avail themselves of state-sponsored schemes.

Article 35A gives special rights to the Jammu and Kashmir’s permanent residents. It disallows people from outside the state from buying or owning immovable property there, settle permanently, or avail themselves of state-sponsored scholarship schemes. It also forbids the J-K government from hiring people who are non-permanent residents.

– Article 35A allows the state to grant special privileges and rights to its ‘permanent residents’, to the exclusion of others living in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Article 370 of the Constitution grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir, while Article 35A empowers the state legislature to define the state’s “permanent residents” and their special rights and privileges.

The provision in Article 35A that grants special rights and privileges to permanent citizens appears in the Constitution as an “appendix”, and not as an amendment.

According to the NGO, Article 35A should be held “unconstitutional” as the President could not have “amended the Constitution” by way of the 1954 order, and that it was only supposed to be a “temporary provision”. The Article was never presented before Parliament, and came into effect immediately. (PTK)