Article 370 of the Constitution is the mother of all ills and the time has come to remove it from the Indian statute book in the larger national interest and in the interest people of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. This was stated today by BJP leader Hari Om, former political adviser to the state BJP president.
“If India is to survive as one nation, Article 370 has to go lock, stock and barrel,” he said. He asserted that its abrogation was a national requirement. He termed the PDP as a patently communal and fundamentally Kashmir-centric party.
He rubbished the assertion of the PDP, the NC, Congress and Left parties that “Article 370 is a bridge between Jammu and Kashmir and New Delhi and if Article 370 is abrogated, Jammu and Kashmir will automatically secede” from India.
“Article 370 was adopted in October 1949, two years after Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India as per the constitutional law on the subject, and it was a purely temporary provision,” he said. He argued that it had nothing to do with the issue of accession.
“Article 370 was, in fact, a conspiracy hatched by the Congress and National Conference against the Indian nation and their whole objective was to accord legitimacy to politics of separatism and communalism of the National Conference,” he said.
“Article 370 has to be revoked to eliminate fissiparous activities in the Valley, stop communal apartheid, integrate Jammu and Kashmir fully with India and promote secularism and democracy in the state,” he said.
