“If on the one hand I accept the Supreme Court’s verdict on Kashmir, on the other I hope that the young people who live in the region are educated to become good citizens and that ordinary people can live in peace.”
These are the words of Sr. Maria Suzette, of the Congregation of the Apostolic Carmel, after Decemebr 12 a constitutional panel made up of five judges ruled that the Indian government acted legally in 2019 when it revoked the auto-nomy of Jammu and Kashmir, guaranteed by Article 370 of the Constitution.
The bench, headed by Jus-tice D.Y. Chandrachud, ruled that Article 370 was a tempo-rary provision “necessary due to war conditions in the State” and was not intended to develop “internal sovereignty”, the ruling said. The special status was to be considered “a characteristic of asymmetric federalism, not of sovereignty,” the court specified.
However, in its verdict, the Supreme Court did not rule on the validity of what is called the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act, the 2019 law that provides for Jammu and Kashmir to join the Indian Union as two Separate states. However, he ordered that local elections be called by September 2024.