Stop Art. 370 games

Governance in the sensitive border state of Jammu and Kashmir continues to be a casualty as ruling coalition partners PDP and BJP signal their respective constituency as they clash with one another. In the process the divide between Jammu and the Kashmir Valley, two of the state’s politically key regions, can only deepen, leading to a further deterioration of the situation which can negatively impact security.

It was to bridge this divide that the PDP and BJP, the most unlikely of allies with their strongholds in the Valley and in Jammu respectively, had come together to form a coalition government. Chief minister Mehbooba Mufti said in the Assembly that those opposing Article 370 of the Constitution, which guarantees the state’s special status, were “anti-national”. In an unprecedented development, the CM’s remarks were expunged by the Speaker, who is from the BJP.

Although in formulating their “agenda of governance, the PDP and BJP cleverly bypassed the sensitive Article 370 question, the CM’s remark was a way to put down the BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS, for whom it’s a matter of faith that the article be scrapped.

There was no apparent reason for PDP to suddenly bring up Article 370. A plausible reason can be that only days earlier, in the Legislative Council, a BJP member successfully moved a resolution to commemorate the last Dogra ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, seen in the Valley as a “tyrant”, by observing his birth anniversary as a holiday. These are futile games of symbolism that won’t help the state.