JAMMU: Supporters of Peoples Democratic Party in Jammu will come out on roads if war breaks out between India and Pakistan. The courageous people of the Duggarland, who have lived offering all sort of assistance to the valiant Indian soldiers during the past five wars, will not let Jammu and Kashmir to be turf of war again. This is what the PDP President Mehbooba Mufti is saying while spitting venom against Narendra Modi led government in New Delhi. She does not hold Pakistan responsible for ceasefire violations but blames the Centre for this scenario which had rendered thousands of border dwellers homeless in Arnia and other villages adjacent to the International Border in the Jammu region.
Mehbooba Mufti does not consider Pakistani High Commissioner sipping tea with Hurriyat Conference as anti-national. She takes all the pride and credit for terrorists talking to the Centre during the Chief Ministership of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and Confidence Building Measures. She also feels elated for separatists being allowed to visit Pakistan between 2002 and 2005 when the Mufti was the Chief Minister. Less than saying that Mufti holds a magic wand to bring thaw between the two hostile countries, she says all efforts have gone waste due to departure of PDP led government. She has no answer to the accusitions of Pakistan and her propaganda machinery which calls mainstream leaders, including those belonging to PDP, as puppets of India. Had PDP been so instrumental in bringing the two countries on negotiating table, why Mehbooba Mufti or Mufti Sayeed were not ‘honoured’ to pay a visit to ‘satanic’ Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi for sipping a cup of tea with a person, who and whose government remain in the look out for weakening India day in and day out.
In the event of war between India and Pakistan, the PDP supporters, even those from Jammu, will come out on streets to protest. Against whom, Madam PDP President
Mehbooba Mufti is angry over New Delhi taking hard line against Islamabad and says the talk of war is an attempt of polarising the society. Does she suggest that the war with Pakistan will not be a ‘pleasure’ for a particular community? She should not indulge in metaphors but speak out the agenda of PDP, which is not different than its self-rule doctrine. Let the supporters of PDP in Jammu understand that self-rule does not integrate the State of Jammu and Kashmir with rest of India but it is projected as a supra State having sub-nationality and sovereignty. It envisages eliminating the sources of ethno-territorial conflicts, ‘entrenched in the traditional notions of sovereignty, self-determination, national and ethnic borders’. It is a formulation, the document says, that will integrate the region without disturbing the existing sovereign authority over delimited territorial space. It will be a way of sharing sovereignty and the self rule being a trans-border concept will have a pan-Kashmir dimension. It will allow sharing of power between two levels of government, for the sharing of sovereignty in a coordinated but not subordinated to one another, each exercising supreme sovereignty in its constitutional prerogatives. So, Greater Jammu and Kashmir will have its own sovereignty.
Thus the unified State will have a Regional Council, a sort of senate, replacing the present Legislative Council and having representatives from PoK. It will serve as a major cross-border institution to ensure long-term coordination of matters and interest relating to the State. The Regional Council will provide frameworks within which certain matters between the two parts of the State and their respective mainland that need to be sorted out to infuse in people a sense of empowerment and a feeling of belonging.
PDP’s dream State will have a common economic space, dual currency system and a mechanism to coordinate economic policy. It will maintain its own external tariff on imports from the rest of the world, including India and Pakistan. The State will have a dual currency, with the currencies of India and Pakistan becoming legitimate tenders within its geographical areas. The State will dispense with the Governor and instead have a Sadr-e-Riyasat, chosen by the State Legislature.
The ‘self-ruled State’ will dispense with the All India Service Act 1951, meaning rolling back of IAS and IPS officers; scrapping of Article 356 and rolling back of Article 249, applied to the State in amended form, so that Parliament cannot exercise legislative jurisdiction over a matter that, otherwise, falls under the State jurisdiction; the proviso added to Article 368, which deals with the powers of Parliament to amend the Constitution of India and not the power of State Legislature to amend its own Constitution will also be dispensed with.
If the syndrome of double speak is dispensed with, let the PDP open up a debate in Jammu on this confounding concept before the electioneering and election process begins to clear the mist in the traditional notions of sovereignty, self-determination, national and ethnic borders’. It is a formulation, the document says, that will integrate the region without disturbing the existing sovereign authority over delimited territorial space. It will be a way of sharing sovereignty and the self rule being a trans-border concept will have a pan-Kashmir dimension. It will allow sharing of power between two levels of government, for the sharing of sovereignty in a coordinated but not subordinated to one another, each exercising supreme sovereignty in its constitutional prerogatives. So, Greater Jammu and Kashmir will have its own sovereignty.
Thus the unified State will have a Regional Council, a sort of senate, replacing the present Legislative Council and having representatives from PoK. It will serve as a major cross-border institution to ensure long-term coordination of matters and interest relating to the State. The Regional Council will provide frameworks within which certain matters between the two parts of the State and their respective mainland that need to be sorted out to infuse in people a sense of empowerment and a feeling of belonging.
PDP’s dream State will have a common economic space, dual currency system and a mechanism to coordinate economic policy. It will maintain its own external tariff on imports from the rest of the world, including India and Pakistan. The State will have a dual currency, with the currencies of India and Pakistan becoming legitimate tenders within its geographical areas. The State will dispense with the Governor and instead have a Sadr-e-Riyasat, chosen by the State Legislature. The ‘self-ruled State’ will dispense with the All India Service Act 1951, meaning rolling back of IAS and IPS officers; scrapping of Article 356 and rolling back of Article 249, applied to the State in amended form, so that Parliament cannot exercise legislative jurisdiction over a matter that, otherwise, falls under the State jurisdiction; the proviso added to Article 368, which deals with the powers of Parliament to amend the Constitution of India and not the power of State Legislature to amend its own Constitution will also be dispensed with.
