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| Sageer deserves some praise despite his controversial recommendations | | |
RUSTAM
JAMMU, Feb 12: Secretary (Ajit Kumar) to the Working Group on Centre-State Relations, headed by Justice Sageer Ahmed, submitted the report to J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on December 23 at Jammu. Ever since, Justice Sageer has been facing the people’s (read integrationists’) ire.
The reason: His controversial recommendations, including the recommendation in favour of autonomy, and his observations and suggestions, including the observation that the people of Jammu province have not been discriminated against and suggestion that Union Territory status could not be given to the cold-desert Ladakh.
Another reason: Justice Sageer Ahmed submitted his report without taking the members of the Working Group into confidence and submitted the report to the Chief Minister, instead of the Prime Minister, who constituted five Working Groups, including this Working Group, in 2006.
Those who have been consistently criticizing Justice Sageer Ahmed just cannot be questioned because their grievances against the chairman of the Working Group are well-founded. Their grievances need to be looked into and redressed. Jammu needs to be politically and economically empowered. Ladakh needs to be given the UT status. The refugees of all varieties need to be fully compensated, properly rehabilitated and given all the rights the Indian citizens enjoy under the Indian Constitution. The backward Gujjar and Bakerwal Muslims need to be given political reservation. And, the state needs to be fully integrated into the Indian Union so that no one could ever say that it is a disputed territory and that State of J&K is not an integral part of India to the same extent as other states of the Union are.
Indeed, Justice Sageer Ahmed did inflict an injustice by not adopting a positive attitude to the people’s grievances and rational suggestions, including the suggestion that the state be fully merged into India. Still the much-maligned Justice Sageer Ahmed deserves some bouquets. He deserves some praise because he debunked the charge of those in Kashmir who have all along accused New Delhi in general and Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri in particular of “eroding the special status the solitary State of J&K enjoyed under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution” and asserted in his report that whatever New Delhi or the Congress stalwarts did in J&K they did it in accordance with the law and none in Delhi ever tried to erode the state’s special status.
To substantiate his point or to show the Kashmiri leaders their rightful place and put things in proper perspective, Justice Sageer Ahmed has catalogued in his report all the Articles of the Indian Constitution, all the Entries of the Union List, all the Entries of the Concurrent List of the Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution and all the Schedules, which were applied to the state between 1951 and 1994. He has comprehensively and logically countered the charge of those seeking a dispensation outside the Indian Constitution on the score of religion that New Delhi did not impose any Central law on the state against the state’s will and that all the Central laws were introduced in the state “with the concurrence of the State Government”.
(Those seeking a dispensation outside the Indian Constitution include – apart from all the separatists -- the Kashmir-based National Conference and People’s Democratic Party leaders. A couple of Kashmir-based Congress leaders are also not averse to the idea of the state getting a dispensation outside the Indian Constitution.)
Justice Sageer Ahmed writes in his report that New Delhi brought J&K under the ambit of 260 out of a total of 395 Articles of the Indian Constitution, 94 out of a total of 97 Entries of the Union List, 26 out of a total of 7 Entries of the Concurrent List of the Seventh Schedule and 7 out of a total of 12 Schedules, but with the “concurrence” of the successive governments in the state, mostly headed by the National Conference.
In other words, Justice Sageer Ahmed has laid bare the disparities between the false and motivated propaganda unleashed by the votaries of a dispensation outside the Indian Constitution and the STARK REALITY.
To be more exact, Justice Sageer Ahmed has exposed in his own typical style the protagonists of greater autonomy and self-rule and virtually accused them of distorting facts, hiding the truth as well as their own role in the process of the state’s constitutional and political integration with the rest of the country and unleashing a no-holds-barred misinformation campaign to escape the wrath of the people of Kashmir.
The upshot of his whole formulation is that the Union Government had at no point of time during all these years even once bypassed or subverted Article 370 in order to bring J&K at par with other states of the Union and that those who had been, and have been, raising their silly objections after becoming a party to the whole process of the state’s integration are absolutely wrong.
The protagonists of greater autonomy must look all these facts in the face and refashion their whole approach towards the Indian Constitution, which is democratic, liberal and secular by any yardstick. They were party to the introduction of the Central laws in the state and they must confess it before the public. They cannot befool the people of the state, especially the Muslims of Kashmir, who have been suffering because of the kind of politics the votaries of greater autonomy, self-rule, independence and Pakistan have been indulging to further their own respective agendas and fulfill their selfish intentions.
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