Joint letter urged Indian top court to form bench on unconstitutional removal of IIOJK statehood
New Delhi: A group of five petitioners comprising former Indian civil bureaucrats and military officers have demanded that a Supreme Court bench should hear petitions on the unconstitutional removal of Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood by Modi government in August 2019.
According to Kashmir Media Service, in an open letter to the Chief Justice of India, B.R. Gavai, the petitioners deplored that the occupied territory has not yet regained the statehood that was seized from it in August 2019.
The petitioners included former Indian Home Secretary Gopal Pillai, Major General (retired) Ashok K. Mehta, Vice-Marshal (retired) Kapil Kak, former member of Interlocutors for Kashmir Radha Kumar and a former Indian secretary of the Inter-State Council Amitabha Pande.
The group highlighted the Indian Supreme Court’s statement during the judgement, that it was “not ruling on the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of demoting an existing state in its entirety to two Union Territories, because the Solicitor-General had assured it that statehood would be restored at an appropriate time”.
“The Union administration’s repeated assurances that statehood will be restored, both in parliament and through the Solicitor-General eighteen months ago, suggest a tacit recognition that the removal of statehood is unconstitutional,” they said.
The letter also stated that the solicitor general’s statement before the Supreme Court bench in December 2023, that statehood would only be restored “in stages” nullifies the constitutional issue that no state can be demoted to a union territory in its entirety. The group said that such a policy puts all [Indian] states at the risk of similar actions being taken against them.
In the context of the recent Pahalgam attack, they said that this is exactly the time to restore statehood. “The high turnout in the October 2024 assembly elections with no violence, and the absolute majority electors gave the National Conference, a regional party, indicated the people had voted for an elected administration with the strength to govern according to public aspirations,” they said. “The most effective bulwark against such vitiation is restoration of civil and political rights, including oversight institutions, that will come with statehood,” they said.
They have demanded that the CJI constitute a bench of the Supreme Court to hear petitions on the unconstitutionality of the removal of Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood, seeking an early deadline for its restoration and ensuring that no future government is able to abrogate existing statehoods.
