The Indian government yesterday revoked disputed Kashmir’s special status with a presidential order, as thousands of newly deployed troops arrived and Internet and phone services were cut in the restive Himalayan region where most people oppose Indian rule.
Indian Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah announced the revocation amid an uproar in parliament and while Kashmir was under a security lockdown that kept thousands of people inside their homes.
The decree needs the approval of the ruling party-controlled parliament, which was debating it yesterday.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The order revokes Article 370 of India’s Constitution, eliminating the state of Jammu and Kashmir’s right to its own constitution and decisionmaking process for all matters except defense, communications and foreign affairs.
It would also strip Kashmir of its protection from Indians from outside the state permanently settling, buying land, holding local government jobs and securing educational scholarships.
Critics of the Hindu nationalist-led government see the move as an attempt to dilute the demographics of Muslim-majority Kashmir with Hindu settlers.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The announcement came after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi convened a Cabinet meeting and the government’s top decisionmaking body on security matters, the Cabinet Committee on Security, which he heads.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and both claim the region in its entirety. Two of the three wars India and Pakistan have fought since their independence from British rule were over Kashmir.
Pakistani Minister of Foreign Affairs Shah Mahmood Qureshi told a Pakistani TV station yesterday from Saudi Arabia, where he is on a pilgrimage to Mecca, that Islamabad would step up diplomatic efforts to prevent the order from taking effect.
“India is playing a very dangerous game by changing the status of Kashmir through illegal acts,” he said.
In Islamabad, hundreds of protesters rallied against the change in Kashmir’s status near the diplomatic enclave that houses the Indian embassy.
Authorities kept demonstrators away from the building because of security concerns.
Ghulam Mohammad Safi, a prominent Kashmiri leader in Pakistan, urged the UN and the international community to help Kashmir achieve self-determination.
The president of the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir, Sardar Masood Khan, also rejected the Indian presidential order and said it could lead to a war with Pakistan.
Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufi tweeted that the Indian government’s decision was “illegal” and “unconstitutional.”
Today marks the darkest day in Indian democracy,” Mufti wrote.
Shah also introduced the “Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Bill” which, if passed, would split the state into two union territories — Jammu and Kashmir, which would have an elected legislature, and Ladakh, which would be ruled directly by the central government without a legislature of its own.
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