news details |
|
|
| Mehbooba says she is prepared to work with others to save special status | | 10% reservation for SCs, STs | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Mar 2: The February 28 amendment in Article 370 that provided for 10 per cent reservation in promotion for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in JK has rattled Kashmiri leaders of all hues. The Amendment will benefit people mostly in Jammu province and Ladakh province. Jammu province alone houses Scheduled Castes. As for Ladakh, the people there were declared Scheduled Tribes in the early 1990s.
The NC, the PDP and the Congress have termed this amendment in Article 370 as a "constitutional fraud" committed to erode the state's special status. They have said that neither the President of India nor the Governor of the state could tinker with Article 370 in any manner and that they had no right to extend such provisions to the state without the consent or concurrence of the state government. The President of India could not ask the Governor of J&K to give concurrence, as he was not an elected government.
"Only the elected government in the state can adopt or not adopt central laws. We are a special state. We have our own constitution. The central intervention or the Centre's decision to extend the Central laws to the state unilaterally is dangerous, unconstitutional and unacceptable," they have said while denouncing the President of India and J&K Governor.
The former BJP-made CM Mehbooba Mufti got so rattled by the amendment in Article 370 that she not only described it an attack on the special status of the state but also suggested that she was prepared to work with anybody who wanted to save the state and its special status. The NC vice-president Omar Abdullah termed the amendment in Article 370 as a "blatantly unconstitutional order" and declared that the NC would discuss the whole issue with some lawyers so that the amendment was declared as null and void.
Two things are clear. One is that the NC, the PDP and the Congress would only alienate SCs and STs and establish that all the three parties are not state-level parties, but a one-province (Kashmir) parties representing a particular community. The other is that their opposition will further embitter the already bitter Centre-state relations and heighten inter-regional and inter-communal tensions. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
