Two of the many Articles are bursting quite loudly in the media in recent days. They are Article 35A and Article 370. Before moving on to why these Articles are in recent news, let us focus first on the preliminaries of the mentioned ones and know what they say.
Article 35A of our Constitution provides the state of Jammu & Kashmir to decide and mark whether an individual does or does not qualify to be a ‘permanent resident’ of the state. This provision provides the state with the ultimate and absolute power to regulate particularly which individual will be treated as a citizen of the state and will thus, be provided with the facilities and the rights permitted by the state. This article was brought in to the act in the year 1954 through special Presidential order.
Article 370, on the other hand, provides the state of Jammu and Kashmir with the permission to construct its own Constitution. This permission comes with an additional credit of the state being declared as an ‘autonomous state.’
The central government is governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) abolished the law that permits Kashmir to enjoy the privilege cased by the implementation of Article 35A and Article 370. Amit Shah, Minister of Home Affairs, had put in front on 5th of August, 2019 (Monday) that the honorable President had abolished Article 370 by signing a decree regarding the same. This implies that the autonomous status of the state of Jammu & Kashmir has been lost after a span of around seven decades from the time it was first implemented.
This further moves on into the central ruling party passing a bill that divides the state into two independent union territories which would be directly governed by the central government. The union territory of Jammu & Kashmir will comprise of the Hindu majority, whereas, the that of Ladakh will have a Buddhist majority along with a notable number of Shia Muslims. Jammu & Kashmir has been proposed to have a legislative assembly, while Ladakh will not be enjoying one. All the media lines were cut off on Sunday night, and the leaders were kept under observation following a house arrest, while these decisions were being made. Later that day, the information was released for everyone.