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| Cong root cause of all ills in J&K: SAC | | | SANT KUMAR SHARMA
EARLY TIMES REPORT
Jammu, January 24:
Restoration of autonomy to Jammu & Kashmir was needed to win back the people for participation in the mainstream politics, according to the State Autonomy Committee (SAC).
The SAC found fault with events that took place from August 1953 to 1965 and after 1965 till 1975. The advent of the Indian National Congress in the state in 1966 has been declared a watershed in the history of the state.
The inauguration of the Congress in the state alone has been squarely blamed for the alleged ``maximum assault upon Kashmir’s special position, its autonomous character, its sovereign character’’. Till 1966, when the National Conference (NC) monopolised the state politics, all was well.
Of course, the SAC does not use the word ``Jammu & Kashmir’’ to describe the state but pointedly uses the word ``Kashmir’s special position’’ as if Jammu and Ladakh regions just don’t exist. Or that the aspirations of the people of these regions are not worth anything or need to be factored into any formulation being prepared for the whole of the state.
If the SAC is to be believed, the root cause of all problems that plague J&K today was the very fact that the Congress party made an entry into the state. Had the party stayed out from the state, for good, and watched from a distance even as the NC ruled the roost, nothing would have gone wrong in J&K, this seems to be the suggestion of the SAC.
Incidentally, the Congress propped up Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah in 1975 after the Indira-Sheikh accord. He ruled with the help of the Congress legislators till 1977 when he got the House dissolved just as a move was hatched to topple him.
The NC came into the power with the help of the Congress in 1987, again, but the honeymoon did not last long. And the Legislative Assembly did not complete its term and had to be dissolved following the outbreak of large scale Pakistan-sponsored violence in the Kashmir valley, to begin with.
The Chief Minister, Mr Omar Abdullah, heads a coalition government at present in which the Congress is an important, if not an equal, partner. And yet, the Justice Sagir Ahmed Committee has recommended the restoration of autonomy for the erosion of which the Congress has been blamed the most by the SAC.
It leads one to the question whether Justice Sagir Ahmed ever bothered to study the SAC report in detail before recommending the restoration of autonomy.
The work done by the Constituent Assembly of J&K has been rubbished by the SAC as the ``real leadership of the people (read Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah and his colleagues)’’ was behind the bars, arbitrarily and unconstitutionally.
The SAC remained silent on our neighbour Pakistan’s unfriendly acts of training militants on its soil but blamed the turmoil witnessed in J&K for the erosion of autonomy for which the Congress was responsible!
According to the SAC, the extension of the jurisdiction of Union Parliament to all matters specified in the Union List was an assault on the state’s autonomy. This happened in 1954 during Syed Mir Qasim’s tenure.
Subsequently, in 1963, Parliament was allowed to make laws for the state in respect of matters pertaining to the Concurrent List also.
These are things that will be reversed and Parliament of India will not have the powers to legislate in several matters specified in the Union List as also those in the Concurrent List.
The restoration of autonomy for J&K will open up a pandora’s box for the Indian Union and it will well and truly be a case of turning the clock back. The integration of the state of J&K into India will have to be reversed, to a great extent, to achieve a modicum of autonomy advocated by the SAC and now endorsed by Justice Sagir committee.
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