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The Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha of the RSS strongly opposes the J&K Permanent Resident (Disqualification) Bill 2004 passed by the J&K Assembly, which seeks to deny free education, voting and property rights to women marrying persons who are not permanent residents of J&K state and also disqualifies such women for state government jobs. This draconian Bill is not only anti-women and anti-human, but also anti-national.
The Bill aims at undoing the J&K High Court verdict, which had, in 2002, unequivocally struck down the earlier administrative order of a similar nature as unconstitutional because it offends the right to equality as enshrined in the Constitution under Articles 14 and 15.
The recent case of expansion of J&K Ministry to have 39 ministers in a 87-member House, despite the fact that the Indian Parliament had recently passed a Bill restricting the size of the ministries in states to 15 per cent of the number of members in the house, is another glaring example of how Article 370 is being misused in flagrant violation of the spirit of the Constitution.
That such a Bill could be brought in is because of the fact that there exists a concept of dual citizenship in the J&K Constitution. This concept underscores the tendency in that state not to consider J&K an integral part of Bharat. Depriving rights to free education, property, voting and government jobs amounts to depriving the citizenship itself. No other State Legislature enjoys this power to deny citizenship rights to its citizens. It is Article 370 that gives J&K Legislature this special power.
The ABPS alleges that using the Article 370 as a weapon, the state government of J&K has been acting against the interests of the people of Jammu and Ladakh regions through such direct or proxy acts like Resettlement Act, Chenab Valley Autonomous Hill Council Bill, etc. Apart from this, it introduced an amendment to Section 47 of the J&K Constitution in 2002, which effectively nullifies the constituency delimitation demand of the people of Jammu and Ladakh regions. The people of Jammu and Ladakh regions have been agitating against this discriminatory attitude of the J&K government and have been demanding a separate statehood and UT status. The ABPS is of the view that these actions of J&K state government further justify their demands, which were endorsed by the ABPS last year.
Political parties that are opposing the controversial Bill talk only about it being anti-women and shirk away from talking about the root cause of the problem, i.e. Article 370. The RSS has always maintained that Article 370 of our Constitution is contrary to the concept of ?one people, one nation?.
The ABPS calls upon the people of J&K to rise against the secessionist J&K Permanent Resident (Disqualification) Bill 2004 and ensure that women of the state are not deprived of their constitutional rights. The ABPS also calls upon the countrymen to bring pressure on the political parties to work towards abrogating the controversial Article 370, which weakens national integration, and which was originally introduced in our Constitution as a ?temporary and transient? provision only.
