Politics | Revoking Article 370 is the Modi government’s biggest surgical strike yet

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With President Ram Nath Kovind, exercising his special powers to strike down Article 370 of the Constitution on the advice of the Union Cabinet, the ultimate instrument of appeasement in independent India has been removed in one stroke.

The deadly impact of appeasement has been growing on the nation’s body like a cancer and there is no doubt that it required drastic action to cure the disease, and in the process some pain and suffering are a given.

At a time when sub-nationalism is assuming dangerous proportions not only within the country but in different parts of the world, a state within a state, as is the case with Jammu & Kashmir, cuts at the very concept of nationhood. In fact, Kashmir’s accession was conceived as an autonomous republic within the Indian Union, but it has been proved that it is an untenable arrangement. When there is an administrative division sanctioned by law, integration at the political level is unconceivable and this is what has been dogging the Union government’s Kashmir policy.

The abrogation of Article 370 alters the terms of J&K’s accession to India, as it supersedes the Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 1954, and states that all the provisions of the Constitution of India shall apply to Jammu & Kashmir. This means the special status conferred on the state under Article 370 stands cancelled.

This is nothing short of a surgical strike by the Modi 2.0, perhaps more important than the one carried out in Pakistan.

When the government announced that the Parliament session was being extended to transact ‘important’ businesses, attention was mostly focussed on the Bill to amend the Right to Information (RTI) Act and the long-delayed anti-triple talaq Bill. Nobody had any inkling about such a Kashmir quake waiting to happen.

Even the introduction of the landmark Bills in the Rajya Sabha have its share of drama. When the Business Advisory Committee of Rajya Sabha met recently, a Bill relating to extension of 10 per cent economic reservation was listed, and was approved. However, when the House assembled on August 5, Chairman Venkaiah Naidu announced that he was using his special powers to grant permission to Union home minister Amit Shah to move three more bills.

Perhaps it was the most opportune time for the government to go for the kill. The Opposition has been in disarray, with a ‘rudderless’ Congress losing its orientation while the other parties saw a trend of attrition in their ranks. The passage of the RTI amendment and anti-triple talaq legislation exposed chinks in the Opposition armour and it became clear that the NDA floor strategy was working well.

As the debate progressed on the four bills in the Rajya Sabha, it became increasingly clear that the Opposition was not getting their acts together. With most parties having been caught unawares, the task for the BJP appeared to be becoming easier. The government has found an unlikely ally in Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has supported the move, saying that it would help bring greater development to the people of the state.

While the development will have its political tremors felt in J&K, now divided into two independent union territories, as well as other parts of the country, the BJP can legitimately claim that it has won the people’s mandate to go ahead with its agenda as the party had included abrogation of Article 370 in its election manifesto.

In the meantime, while the international ramifications for the development need to be watched, there is also the threat of a judicial challenge, which could arise from the complexities in the relation between Jammu & Kashmir and the rest of India. Legal opinion is divided over the right of the Union government, including the President, to make changes to the arrangement without the prescribed sanction.