New Delhi cannot keep stalling the restoration of Statehood to J&K

New Delhi cannot keep stalling the restoration of Statehood to J&K

It has been over two and a half years since the Supreme Court of India recorded the Union government’s solemn assurance that Statehood would be restored to Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). It set no timeline, but the expectation was that it would happen within a reasonable period and steps would be taken progressively. That the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government has done nothing on this front since then can only mean that it has interpreted the lack of a timeline as a licence for the indefinite deferral of Statehood. This is despite repeated assurances from the Centre. Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged it in the run-up to the J&K elections, and Home Minister Amit Shah reiterated it on the floor of Parliament. Unsurprisingly, the inaction has driven J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to organise a series of agitations and rallies, culminating in a sit-in at Jantar Mantar on July 20. His grievance, and that of the province, is legitimate. The retention of Union Territory status even after popular elections subordinates the elected government to an unelected Lieutenant Governor who retains preponderant authority over the bureaucracy, the police and other institutions. There is no principled justification for perpetuating this arrangement once elections have been held and a government installed.

New Delhi’s rationale for inaction has been trite: “security”, invoked by the Solicitor-General before the Court late last year, citing the Pahalgam attack, in a hearing on a petition seeking restoration of Statehood. But this argument cuts no ice. By the government’s account, the attack was orchestrated from across the border, and India responded with Operation Sindoor. A cross-border provocation can have no logical bearing on whether J&K’s elected representatives are to be trusted with the powers of a full State. If anything, empowering elected leaders to address local grievances is precisely how a polity assuages concerns before they turn into resentment, which fed into cycles of militancy in the Kashmir Valley for decades. The Centre’s handling of J&K, Ladakh and even Manipur reveals a troubling pattern in how border regions with substantial minority populations are treated. Secure in its dominance across the north, the west and now the east, the BJP appears to regard the concerns of citizens in these provinces as expendable. Such a view is myopic: governance that treats a border region as politically dispensable only deepens alienation, and instability soon spills over and unsettles governance overall. The BJP seems cynically content to leave the Statehood question hanging until the political arithmetic, already sought to be reworked through delimitation in J&K, tilts decisively in its favour. A promise made to the Court, to Parliament and to the people of J&K cannot be held in abeyance until political circumstances turn expedient for the BJP.