National Conference (NC) Member of Parliament Hasnain Masoodi Saturday impressed upon the Government of India (GoI) to respect the democratic aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir by realising the ground realities.
A statement of NC issued here said that expressing concern over the discrimination being meted out to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, Masoodi said that there could be no trade-off between the peoples’ political aspirations and development.
He said that various states enjoy special provisions and that there was a common thread between these special provisions in terms of respecting the political aspirations of the people. “It was the special provision to Jammu and Kashmir in the shape of Articles 370 and Article 35-A that was sore in the eye of the ruling BJP. There are states within the Union of India, in particular the northeastern ones, which have been provided with far more stronger constitutional safeguards,” Masoodi said in the statement. “Even the Prime Minister of the country can’t buy land there. The degree of autonomy the state of Jammu and Kashmir enjoyed was far less than the one being enjoyed by the various northeastern states where no citizen of the country can visit without acquiring an inner line permit, a perquisite document issued by the concerned state government to allow inward travel of an Indian citizen into those areas for a limited period. It is obligatory for Indian citizens from outside those states to obtain a permit for entering into the protected state. What the present government is doing in the northeast has stripped the degree of autonomy enjoyed by J&K.”
He said why was BJP unconcerned about “one nation, one law” when it comes to the northeast and why J&K only was being discriminated against?