RUSTAM
EARLYTIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Mar 10: The response of the Kashmiri rulers and their subordinates to the passionate appeals made by National Commission for Women (NWC) Chairperson, Dr. Mohini Giri, and women's groups was highly biased towards the daughters of J&K. These groups had also appealed to all those who represented the J&K government in the UNICEF seminar on "gender discrimination in Kashmir" at Srinagar in the nineties of the last century that Part-III of the Constitution be suitably amended in order to bring about parity between men and women.
The only silver-lining was that some vague assurances were given by certain officials that they would persuade the powers-that-be in Srinagar to accept the suggestion that "those Kashmiri women who choose to marry outside should be given a right to get their SSCs restored, if they are widowed or divorced outside the State". What a concession! The deprived women had been demanding deletion from the statue book Part-III and asking the authorities in the state to bring them under the purview of Articles 15, 16, 19 and 29 and Part-II of the Indian Constitution, but they got a mere assurance.
The fact of the matter is that Kashmiri leaders of all shades of opinion repudiated the women's demands under several pretexts, which can be categorized as untenable, ridiculous and preposterous. For example, they said that "any change in the SSLs would open floodgates for outsiders to settle in J&K" and that "the demands of women are a move designed to undermine the special status of the State". The also said that "the demands of women, if accepted, will neutralize the National Conference's efforts to get the eroded autonomy". Some of them even went to the extent of asserting: "Any attempt to amend Part-III of the J&K Constitution will harm the basis of accession which mostly revolves round Article-370".
Constitutional experts would surely vouch for the fact that all the formulations linking a women's issue with politically sensitive ones such as the special status of J&K have no bearing whatsoever on the National Conference's clamour of greater autonomy or on the State's accession to the Indian Union.
As far as the Central Government is concerned, it consistently expresses its inability and helplessness in intervening on behalf of the suffering women of J&K. In fact, the Minister of State for Personnel, Grievances and Pensions, S R Balasubrmaniam, Bemoaned in the nineties that Delhi could not do anything as "Article 15 (A) of the Constitution, as applicable to J&K, specially provides that no law defining the class of persons who are or shall be permanent residents of the State shall be void on the ground that it is inconsistent with rights conferred on other citizens of India".
As pointed out earlier, it was the Full Bench of the J&K High Court that took a holistic view on the problem facing the daughters of the state on October 7, 2002 and pronounced that a female State Subject will not lose her status as a State Subject on her marriage to a non-State Subject. The High Court verdict had not pleased the National Conference and the People's Democratic Party.
It was in March 2004 that an attempt was made by the People's Democratic Party-led coalition government to upturn the High Court's landmark judgment. It moved an official Bill in this regard and it was passed in no time, just a few minutes, with all the Congress, JKNPP and BJP legislators endorsing the anti-daughters' Bill. However, the Bill was declared "defeated" in the Legislative Council by its Chairman and National Conference leader Abdul Rashid Dar, much to the chagrin of the Kashmir-based legislators. The reason: The issue of gender bias had in the meantime create a storm not only in Jammu, but also at the national level, with the Congress and the BJP denouncing the Bill as anti-women, reactionary and out-dated.
Subsequently, when the Legislative Council returned the Bill to the Legislative Assembly, the Congress, the JKNPP, BJP and a few independent legislators joined hands and voted against the Bill. The Bill was defeated despite the fact that no less than 46 legislators belonging to the National Conference, the People's Democratic Party and the CPI-M were in favour of the Bill. The collapse of the Bill further embittered the already rather bitter relations between the National Conference and the People's Democratic Party. They accused each other of ensuring the collapse of the Bill. The National Conference even expelled Abdul Rashid Dar from the party on the charge that he had hobnobbed with the Congress and the People's Democratic Party to bail out the government. All this happened in August 2004. Had the People's Democratic Party insisted on the passage of the Bill, the government would have collapsed then and there.
However, the defeat of the Bill did not deter the coalition government. Certain vested interests and communal and anti-women forces in the political establishment, instead of implementing the High Court verdict, allowed the concerned official in the Revenue Department to make endorsement of "valid till marriage" on the State Subject Certificate issued to unmarried daughters of State Subjects. (To be continued)