Defer Article 35A hearing till J&K state poll: Omar
SRINAGAR: All the leaders have agreed that we tell Centre and the SC to postpone the hearing in the case for the time being till there are (assembly) elections in the state.
OMAR ABDULLAH , NC leader and former J&K chief minister
A meeting of political parties convened by the National Conference (NC) on Thursday resolved to approach the central government and the Supreme Court for a deferment of the apex court’s hearings against Article 35A of the Constitution until elections are held to the Jammu and Kashmir assembly and the state has an elected government in place.
Article 35A gives special rights to the Jammu and Kashmir’s permanent residents. It disallows people from outside from buying or owning immovable property or settle permanently in the state, or avail of state-sponsored scholarship schemes. It also forbids the J-K government from hiring people who are non-permanent residents
The all-party meeting was held at NC president Farooq Abdullah’s residence and was attended by state Congress leader Taj Mohiuddin, Communist Party of India (Marxist) state secretary MY Tarigami and Democratic Party Nationalist (DPN) president Ghulam Hassan Mir. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), partners in the coalition government that collapsed in June, did not attend.
“All the leaders have agreed that we tell Centre and Supreme Court to postpone the hearing in the case for the time being till there are (assembly) elections in the state. After elections it will be new government’s responsibility to defend Article 35 A in Supreme Court. Till then there should be no forward movement in this case,” NC leader and former chief minister Omar Abdullah told journalists after the meeting.
The Supreme Court last month adjourned hearings until January 2019 on a bunch of petitions against Article 35 A. The cases have triggered fears in J&K that the constitutional guarantees offered to the state would be tampered with through the legal route.
Omar Abdullah said the decision was prompted by fears that the case won’t be properly represented in the Supreme Court when the state was under “governor’s rule and under control of the central government.” The state assembly has been in suspended animation since the PDPBJP government fell apart.
“J&K is under central rule, whether you call it governor’s rule or anything else but it is central rule and only the writ of centre will run...So we don’t know what type of defence will be there in Supreme Court regarding Article 35 A on January 9 hearing,” he said.
The NC vice president said that the leaders in the meeting were concerned over the stand of additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta.
“He was not sent to talk about his views or talk about any political party. He was not representative of centre there. He should have represented state there and he should have talked about the state’s brief, not beyond that. We have lost trust in him when he talked beyond the brief of the state, and all leaders agreed that Tushar Mehta should be removed from the case and the lawyer who was representing earlier should be chosen again,” Omar said.
At an August 31 hearing in the Supreme Court, the ASG had said that there is an “aspect of gender discrimination in Article 35A which needed to be debated upon”.
The NC and PDP have decided to boycott the upcoming local elections over questions raised against Article 35A. The polls are set to start on October 1 and last until the first week of November. On Thursday, the Peoples’ Democratic Front led by Khansahib Hakeem Yasin said it had decided not to participate in the local bodies elections till the situation in J&K improves.
“Holding of long-awaited local bodies elections was indeed in the overall socio-economic interests of the state but this exercise should not become the cause of fresh violence and killings of civilians given the prevailing security scenario,” he said.