Omar, Mehbooba booked under Public Safety Act on last day of detention

Earlier in the day, the PSA was also slapped on two political stalwarts from NC and its arch-rival PDP

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti were on Thursday night booked under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA), barely hours before their six-month-long “preventive detention” was to come to an end. Earlier in the day, the PSA was also slapped on two political stalwarts from NC and its arch-rival PDP.

A magistrate accompanied by a police officer arrived at Hari Nivas where 49-year-old Omar Abdullah has been detained since August 5, the day the Centre abrogated the special status of the erstwhile state and also announced its bifurcation into two union territories — Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir. He was handed over a warrant issued under the PSA, a law which was enacted by his grandfather Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah in 1978 initially to check timber smuggling.

The PSA, which came handy for police force to book separatists and militant sympathisers, has two sections — ‘public order’ and ‘threat to security of the state’. The former allows detention without trial for six months and the latter for two years. Omar, who has been junior foreign minister and commerce minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led Cabinet in 2000, was served with a three-page dossier in which he was alleged to have made statements in the past which were “subversive” in nature…

Jammu & Kashmir special status: Decoding Article 35A and Article 370

While popular notion is that Article 35A and Article 370 give J&K a special state status, the Centre has similar arrangements with several others. We explain the two statutes to demystify the issue

Current Affairs: With speculation rife that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -led central government could abolish or try to amend Article 35A and article 370, which give a special status to Jammu & Kashmir, there is a lot of confusion as to what these two statutes entail. Political parties on either side of the debate have voiced their opinion, with some calling tinkering with Article 35A “like setting powder keg on fire”, while others have supported the idea calling it a move to unify of the country.

What is Article 35A?

This provision of the Constitution allows the Jammu & Kashmir state Assembly to define who is and is not a “permanent resident” of the state. To further break it down, this provision of the Constitution gives the legislators from Jammu & Kashmir the exclusive power to determine as to which people in or outside the state will have special rights and privileges granted by the state….

Can Article 35A be amended or repealed?

The repealing of Article 35A could be a legal uphill task for the central government, experts said. For any changes to be made to the provision, the constituent Assembly of the state has to consent to it. The constituent Assembly of the state, however, ceased to exist in 1957. This, constitutional expert Shubhankar Dam said, made seeking nod from the Assembly impossible….

Mehbooba wants India to talk to Pakistan, separatists in Kashmir

Indian officials have repeatedly ruled out talks with Pakistan unless it acts against militant groups based there

Current Affairs: India should talk to Pakistan and separatists in Kashmir to defuse tension arising from a suicide attack on a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy that was claimed by Pakistan-based militants, a former chief minister of the state said. Mehbooba Mufti, who was chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir from early 2014 to June last year when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party withdrew support for her regional party, said an ongoing crackdown on militants and those supporting secession could further alienate the people.

India has vowed to kill all the militants in the country’s only Muslim-majority state if they do not give up arms, after a 20-year-old local man killed 40 paramilitary troopers in a suicide attack last month. Indian security forces have killed 18 militants in Kashmir since then, the army said on Monday. The attack nearly led to another war between arch-rival India and Pakistan, both of which claim the Himalayan region in full but rule in part.

“I strongly feel that there has to be a dialogue process internally as well as externally, with Pakistan,” Mufti said in an interview on Friday. “The situation is going to get worse if some kind of political process is not initiated on the ground now.” Indian officials have repeatedly ruled out talks with Pakistan unless it acts against militant groups based there. India says its warplanes late last month bombed a militant camp in Pakistan, which responded with an aerial attack the next day….

Read full story on India Pakistan Conflicts