Kashmir bill to breeze past lower house
NEW DELHI: India’s lower house of Parliament was set to ratify a bill yesterday that would downgrade the governance of India-administered, Muslim-majority Kashmir amid an indefinite security lockdown in the disputed Himalayan region.
The Hindu nationalist-led government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi moved the “Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill” for a vote by the Lok Sahba a day after the measure was introduced alongside a presidential order dissolving a constitutional provision that gave Kashmiris exclusive, hereditary rights.
The situation in Kashmir was unclear after the government shut off most means of communication with the outside world, including internet, cellphone and landline networks. The government deployed thousands of troops to the restive Himalayan region amid fears its actions could spark uprisings.
The ANI TV news agency showed armed soldiers in camouflage and other security personnel standing near barricades of barbed wire in the otherwise empty streets of Srinagar, Kashmir’s main city.
The lower house is expected to easily ratify the bill downgrading Kashmir from a state to a union territory with a legislature and carving out Buddhistmajority Ladakh — a pristine, sparsely populated area that stretches from the Siachen Glacier to the Himalayas — as its own union territory without a legislature.
Parliament’s upper house approved the bill with a two-thirds majority, with many opposition lawmakers voting with the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
Tensions also have soared along the Line of Control, the volatile, highly militarised frontier that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, who both claim the region in its entirety.
Pakistan President Arif Alvi convened parliament in Islamabad to discuss India’s surprise measure on Kashmir, after Pakistan’s foreign minister denounced it and appealed to the United Nations in a letter on Monday to send a fact-finding mission.
Both houses of Pakistan’s parliament were expected to unanimously adopt a resolution to reject the revocation of Indian-controlled Kashmir’s special status despite objections from opposition lawmakers that the resolution had not originally appeared on the agenda.