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| Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor supports Narendra Modi | | Debate on Article 370 | | Rustam
Jammu, Dec 4: Sunanda Pushkar, a Kashmiri Hindu woman married to senior Congress leader and Union Minister Shashi Tharoor, on Tuesday swung solidly behind BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and said there was the need to hold a comprehensive debate on Article 370 and its implications, especially its adverse impact on the daughters of Jammu and Kashmir. She said that she is a daughter of the state, but she is barred by this Article from exercising the rights which are available to the male residents of the state. So much so, she said that she doesn't want to visit Kashmir where the women are discriminated against.
Sunanda Pushkar left none in any doubt that she is quite unhappy with the state subject rights applicable to women of the state and she would want a debate so that there is complete gender equality.
Before August 2005, daughters of the state subjects married outside the state to non-state subjects used to forfeit their citizenship rights in Jammu and Kashmir. That month, the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir directed the State Government not to make any endorsement of "Valid Till Marriage" on the state subject certificates issued to the daughters of the state. The State Government had to respect the High Court verdict. However, the State Government did not amend the state subject laws to grant citizenship rights to the children of the daughters of the state married to non-state subjects, thus making invidious distinctions between the daughters of the state married outside and their children.
One can understand the pain of Sunanda Pushkar, whose parents live in Channi Himmat, Jammu, and the pain of all the daughters of the state married outside. However, her plain speaking disturbed both her husband and controversial Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. Feeling embarrassed by the plain-speaking of Sunanda Pushkar, Shashi Throor dissociated himself from her statement to escape the wrath of the Congress high command, which has abandoned the Nehru legacy to pamper communalists in Kashmir and elsewhere for vote-bank politics. As for Omar Abdullah, he urged her to study the state subject rules to clear her doubts. It is a different matter that he also took recourse to half-truths and did not tell her that the children of the daughters of the state married outside to non-state subjects have no right whatsoever in Jammu and Kashmir. |
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