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| Will Farooq Abdullah help UPA Govt ? | | Delhi is for financial autonomy to J&K | |
B L KAK
NEW DELHI, AUG. 19: Government of India has ruled out immediate examination of the resolution seeking greater autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir. The resolution was adopted by Jammu and Kashmir Legislature during the Farooq Abdullah regime. As the issue is both emotive and controversial, the Congress-led coalition government at the Centre has chosen to pursue a cautious line at a time when Kashmir's future political and administrative status and strucdture is being hotly discussed within and outside India.
True, if the autonomy resolution was turned down by the Vajpayee Government, the present ruling establishment at the Centre has not brushed aside the autonomy formula. Signifcantly, however, New Delhi's attention on the issue got diverted to other aspects of the Kashmir situation, particularly after Gen. Parvez Musharraf, President of Pakistan, talked of a set of proposals he had in his mind for the resolution of the Kashmir problem.
Government headed by Manmohan Singh has no immediate plans to conduct a fresh examination of the resolution for greater autonomy to the troubled State of Jammu and Kashmir. The question of financial autonomy appeared to be of greater signifcance than the autonomy proposal of Farooq Abdullah and his National Conference party. The J&K Assembly had, on June 26,2000, passed a resolution demanding steps by the State and the Centre for the implementation of State Autonomy Committe (SAC) report. The Vajpaye Government decided not to accept the resolution. The Manmohan Singh Government in the initial stages seemed willing to consider the resolution. But the plan, in this regard, was not pursued subsequently.
Signifcance is atached to reports doing the rounds that Farooq Abdullah and the National Conference may not hesitate to go some distance in scaling down autonomy demand to level the present government at the Centre ought to be willing to accept. The National Conference, presently headed by Farooq's son, Omar Abdullah, is already committed to the task of ensuring for the people of Kashmir greater autonomy. At the same time, it is felt by a section of Kashmiri politicians that references to the pre-1953 status of Jammu and Kashmir were inadvertently included in the SAC report. Such an arangement would leave the Union in charge of only Defence, External Affairs and Communication, and exclude the State from the control of Election Commission and the Supreme Court.
The claim seems evasive. The SAC report explicitly pegs its demand around 1953, excluding even a passing mention of the subsequent 1975 Sheikh Abdullah-Indira Gandhi Accord. TheSangh Parivar may not hesitate to demand the creation of a quasi-autonomous Hindu-majority zone in Jammu as a price for furthering autonomy in Kashmir. The National Conference, whose political constituency lies in the Muslim-majority areas north of the river Chenab and in the Kashmir Valley, might well acquiesee in such an enterprise.
Taking the situation as it is, and taking into account the existence of communal forces in Jammu and Kashmir, it seems unlikely that any Indian government would be willing to engineer the kind of communal transfiguration of J&K that the Hindu Right seeks.
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