Earlier this year, the Parliament passed four laws pertaining to Jammu and Kashmir. In continuity with the Union government’s plan to rework the entire legal architecture of the erstwhile state, the new legislations introduced a series of new changes including making special nominations for members of West Pakistan refugees and Kashmiri Pandits in the legislative assembly, changing the nomenclature of ‘weak and underprivileged classes’ to ‘other backward class’ (OBCs), and expanding the list of scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (SCs) eligible for affirmative action benefits in the union territory.
Couched in the idiom of welfarism, the changes did not initially evoke any concern outside of the political circles. However, the lakhs of Kashmiris students and job aspirants from the ‘general’ category were soon to realise the crushing costs of these measures that effectively pushed the reserved quotas in jobs and education to 70% (from 52% before 2019), leaving an overwhelming population (69%) of those who aren’t eligible for any reservation benefits to compete for far fewer jobs.
The groundswell of anger erupted last week when a massive crowd of students descended outside the house of the J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah, demanding the end to the new policies in the region where unemployment has peaked to 32.8%, the highest in the country.
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To illustrate the desperation among youth, over 5.5 lakh applicants appeared for just 4,000 police constable posts earlier this month in J&K.
Reluctant to come into a confrontation with the Centre (which is responsible for the policy), CM Omar is left scandalised, not least because the students’ movement is being shepherded by his own party MP Aga Ruhullah, who has managed to cultivate a lot of goodwill among the young sections in the last few years.
The year of realisations
The year 2024 has offered a lot for Kashmiris to chew on and ruminate, for it is in this year that a lot of decisions taken without their consent in the post-2019 scenario are coming to fruition and impressing upon the people the true intent of these changes.
Let’s take another example. In October 2020, the Centre notified UT of J&K Reorganisation (Adaptation of Central Laws) Third Order revoking 12 land related state laws in J&K, while readapting 26 others with major changes. Again, the changes didn’t spark much outrage back then.
But it is in 2024 that the full malevolent force of these decisions is baring its fangs. Last month, the villagers in the south Kashmir districts of Shopian and Pulwama took to the streets to resist the seizure of their orchard land by the Indian Railways that plans to build five new railway lines across the Valley. The villagers who subsist mostly on apple farming allege that such a project will usurp their prime agricultural land.
They also refused compensation alleging that they won’t trade a lifelong income generating vocation with reparations that will last only a few years.
To be sure, all this would have been difficult before the J&K Agricultural Land (Conversion of Non-Agriculture Purposes) Regulations, 2022 that were notified pursuant to the amendments made in October 2020.
The elections as political setback for BJP
The biggest development in 2024 in J&K was the holding of both parliamentary and assembly elections. The latter took place after a gap of 10 years.
Leveraging its five years of direct control over the UT, the BJP government had girded its loins and seemed certain of squeezing some kind of electoral benefits out of it. It banked on a massive number of independents (365 out of 908 total candidates in fray) signalling how the idea of political fragmentation suited its strategy. But that plan fizzled out as only seven independents won, four of whom were already the National Conference (NC) deserters who rejoined the party.
The plan to encourage political surrogates also failed miserably as they parties accused of having a tacit understanding with BJP couldn’t perform as was expected of them. Altaf Bukhari of Jammu & Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP), for instance, lost his own constituency of Channapora in Srinagar with more than 5,000 votes.
The plan to tweak reservations rules to the advantage of Pir Panjal’s tribal people – whose 7.35 lakh voters were added to the South Kashmir constituency as a counterweight to the Kashmiri vote – also did not work the way BJP had expected. It was NC that eventually won the South Kashmir parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha polls.
Also proving to be a damp squib was the delimitation program. The NC-Congress alliance wrecked the BJP’s strategy – of racking up more numbers through awarding new seats to Jammu division out of proportion to its population – by winning seven of the eight major seats in Pir Panjal region, paving the way for for NC to romp home with thumping majority.
It was perhaps to hedge against such an eventuality that the Union Home Ministry July notified J&K (Second Amendment) Government Business Transaction Rules, 2024, arrogating more substantial powers for the UT’s lieutenant governor, while leaving the elected CM to play a largely titular role.
Unable to actualise his key campaign promises, the beleaguered CM Omar is now busy tending to snow clearance operations, fixing broken power lines and organising surprise visits to hospitals and health centres.
A timeline of major events this year
A lot happened in 2024 that reinforced the idea how the authoritarian tendencies, coupled with absolute contempt for local political sensibilities, continue to complement the governance in Kashmir.
Earlier in January, J&K Board of School Education mandated only Board-authorised curriculum in schools across the UT, raising concerns that the LG administration was limiting access to study materials from independent publishers, and that the move was geared to control ideas. “No such order is applicable across India,” opposition leader Mehbooba Mufti tweeted.
People in the Valley also grew angry over a power purchase agreement between a subsidiary of J&K based power utility and its counterpart in Rajasthan for a period of 40 years. Asserting that the agreement had fuelled feelings of betrayal, the NC spokesperson had then said that “the government should have prioritised providing electricity to the domestic consumers, given the looming energy crisis. For electricity-starved people of J&K, is this agreement a solution?”
This posturing stood in sharp relief against this week’s statement from CM Omar who said that uninterrupted power supply in J&K was only possible after 100 percent metering of electricity connections.
Two particular incidents in 2024 also served to highlight that, on the heels of Centre’s imperious attitude towards J&K, even non-local civil servants have begun to grow contemptous of institutional checks and balances.
Also read: Anger Against BJP’s Article 370 Move Rocks J&K Assembly
In August, one IAS officer posted in Ganderbal district sanctioned the “demarcations” of the land owned privately by a judge who had previously ordered the officer’s salary to be withheld for not complying with the court’s order. The court later asked him to tender an apology for this conduct.
In another case, the judges at the JK&L High Court decried the administration for acting “consistently with utter contempt” towards the judicial system following the incident involving two senior administration officials who offered two contradictory responses by way of explaining the absence of the UT’s chief secretary from the court proceedings.
New Kashmir is the same as Old Kashmir
In yet another significant move this year, home minister Amit Shah declared that family members of militants and stone pelters would be denied government jobs in the UT, raising concerns that the administration would arbitrarily target people on account of guilt by association.
Separately, the J&K government also pulled out an archaic law Enemy Agents Ordinance (EAO) from its decades long obscurity and said it will be invoked against any people supporting foreign militants.
The law mandates either life imprisonment or death as punishment. As one retired officer remarked with a zinger, “They (are discarding) old colonial laws from July 1 (in reference to adapting the new criminal code) but consider using a Maharaja-era law to maintain peace in J&K. Have we not moved beyond 1947?”
Last month, the new elected administration also struggled with its first big challenge after the Army’s Rashtriya Rifles (RR) unit got embroiled in allegations of torturing four civilians in Kishtwar district in Jammu. Although the Army ordered an inquiry into the allegations, nothing is known about its progress or lack thereof.
This happened in the context of upsurge in violence in the Jammu region this year, belying the Modi government’s claims that militancy in J&K has all but ended.
As young Kashmiris discover that modalities mechanising the ‘New Kashmir’ are similar to the old, it is likely to become a source of incipient anger against the structures of power that have been put in place in the aftermath of 2019.
The greatest challenge for Omar in 2025 will now be to go out of his way to persuade Kashmiris that his rule will not be a continuation of the status quo.
Shakir Mir is an independent journalist based in Srinagar. His work is located at the intersection of conflict, politics, history and memory
