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| Ms Mehbooba, President of India can repeal Article 370 in no time | | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Jan 16: Supreme Court of India will hear pleas against Article 370 on April 2. The pleas against the Article -- under which the solitary state of J&K enjoys a separate status within the Union -- will be heard by a bench comprising CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Ashok Bhushan and SK Koul.
A number of persons have approached the SC and urged it to declare Article 370 null and void as it was a temporary Article and it outlived its utility after the dissolution of the J&K Constituent Assembly on January 26, 1957. A BJP leader from Delhi and SC lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay has also filed a PIL against Article 370.
The PILs in the SC challenging the constitutional validity of Article 370 have once again triggered a debate in Kashmir with its votaries claiming that Article 370 just could not be amended or repealed. Former CM and PDP chief Mehbooba too has said that no power on earth could repeal Article 35A and Article 370. Their claims are ill-founded. Article 370 can be revoked by the Union President in no time through an executive order or the whole of the Indian Constitution could be applied to the state through Article 370 itself. Even Sheikh Abdullah, a believer in the concept of greater autonomy, had virtually said that Article 370 could be repealed.
What is the constitutional position? Commenting on Article 370 in the Lok Sabha on December 4, 1964, the then Union Home Minister, Gulzari Lal Nanda, had said that Article 370 did not inhibit the Centre from extending its writ to the State.
"Article 370 is a tunnel…A good deal of traffic has already passed (i.e. application of Central laws to J&K) and more will…Article 370 whether you keep it or not, has already been completely emptied of its contents," he said in the Lok Sabha.
The then Education Minister, M.C. Chagla, had endorsed the Nanda's view and asserted that "through Article 370, the whole of the Indian Constitution could be applied to Jammu and Kashmir".
The Union Home Minister GL Nanda had not stopped just there. He had further told the Lok Sabha that amendment of Article 370 was very simple and requires only "a Presidential order - a mere executive order." In fact, he had given all to understand that the President of India using powers vested in him under Article 370 could amend or revoke the clause.
Even Sheikh Abdullah as J&K CM told the Assembly in 1982 that "Article 370 was not a divine scripture which could not be removed".
All this should clear the air and establish that Article 370 is not sacrosanct and that it could be removed from the statute book by the President of India through an executive order.
100s of articles of the Indian Constitution have already been applied to J&K, or the J&K Government has adopted identical legislations. |
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