Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Jammu and Kashmir is the biggest industry in Pakistan–for its politicians, the army, and the media!
So, immune to reasoning and logic, Pakistan continued to bark up the wrong tree, without any locus standi whatsoever, as it hysterically reacted to India’s Supreme Court upholding the Narendra Modi Government’s abrogation of the temporary Article 370, which once-upon-a-time granted Jammu and Kashmir a so-called “special status.”
Despite its plight on multiple fronts, and unmindful of its terror infrastructure coming back to haunt its own body—only on Tuesday, terrorists killed 23 people in Khaibar Pakhtunkhwa—Islamabad reeled out its dog-eared rhetoric on J&K. Even its bankrolled media criticized the Supreme Court verdict and claimed the ruling had “no legal value.”
The five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, unanimously upheld on Monday the abrogation of the temporary Article 370 in 2019 and agreed the President had the power to nullify the “special status” of J&K.
A day after the SC judgment, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a widely published article, said Jammu and Kashmir became a “victim” of confusion at the time of national integration after the Independence. Articles 370 and 35A were like “major obstacles” and they “ensured that the people of J&K never got the rights and development that the rest of their fellow Indians got.”
“It was always my firm belief that what had happened in J&K was a great betrayal – to our nation and the people living there. It was also my strong desire to do whatever I can to remove this blot, this injustice done to the people,” he wrote.
But Pakistan’s predicament is predictable: its National Assembly elections are scheduled for February 8, 2024, and no one in the basket-case South Asian country, not even the media, dare talk sense or go against the anti-India narrative the corrupt-to-the-core military rulers crafted over the last 75 years as a hedge against its nefarious designs.
Some ‘gems’ of the media reports are here:
“International law doesn’t recognize India’s unilateral and illegal actions of 5 August 2019. The judicial endorsement by the Indian Supreme Court has no legal value. Kashmiris have an inalienable right to self-determination in accordance with the relevant UN SC resolutions,” Jalil Abbas Jilani, a minister in the country’s caretaker government, said.
Pakistan’s national daily, Dawn wrote in its editorial that the judgment acted as “pouring salt on the Kashmiris’ wounds”. It also cited Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s “Nehruvian blunders” remark in the Lok Sabha and criticized the BJP-led central government.
The Express Tribune called August 5, 2019, the “darkest day for Kashmir.”
Another national daily, The Nation, said, “India fails Kashmir again”…and “India forcibly revokes IOK special status.”
Pakistan’s news broadcaster GEO News reported that the “Narendra Modi-led Indian government abrogated Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and deployed “lakhs of soldiers” in the border state to prevent any opposition against the illegal step.
Another broadcaster ARY News wrote the “Narendra Modi regime in gross violation of the United Nations Resolutions and international law scrapped Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution” and referred to the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir as “Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.”