Jehangir Ali 
Srinagar: Lieutenant governor (LG) Manoj Sinha’s speech to the Jammu and Kashmir assembly has drawn attention after he sought to endorse the National Conference-led government’s call for the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s “statehood and constitutional guarantees”.
As per constitutional protocol and practice, the words he read out were drafted by the popularly elected government and not him. For this reason, some political analysts and legal experts see Sinha’s endorsement of the NC agenda as “standard parliamentary practice” – in which the LG, by nominally throwing his weight behind the elected government’s policies and programmes in the first meeting of the assembly, plays his role as the formal head of the Union territory.
At the same time, given how the Modi government has played fast and loose with constitutional propriety in J&K, Sinha could also have chosen to be difficult.
While some political analysts argue that it is “too early” to see this as a softening of the LG’s stance – he had only last week taken the chief minister and his cabinet colleagues to the cleaners for staying away from the Union Territory Foundation Day celebrations – his formal endorsement of the Abdullah government’s positions on statehood and the restoration of constitutional guarantees may be an oblique admission by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP)-led Union government of its failure to control political dynamics in Kashmir.
Sinha’s assertion that “my government” would “make all efforts for restoration of full Statehood and Constitutional Guarantees available to the State” also comes at a time when J&K has witnessed a dramatic uptick in violence after Omar Abdullah-led coalition government was sworn into office last month.
The purported climbdown also comes at a time when India’s diplomacy is in a rough patch after Canada accused the Union home minister Amit Shah of involvement in plots to engineer violence and kill Canadian nationals on its territory.
Whither constitutional guarantees?
Sheikh Showkat Hussain, Srinagar-based author and human rights scholar, pointed out that Sinha’s use of words ‘to the State’ in his speech could imply that he was advocating the restoration of J&K’s special status “in a subtle way”.
“Instead, had he used the word ‘to a state’, it would have meant the guarantees as provided for every other state in the constitution. Whether it implies the restoration of statehood and other constitutional guarantees that were granted to J&K previously remains to be seen,” Hussain, former Head and Dean at the School of Legal Studies, Central University of Kashmir, said.
Analysts said that the reference to “constitutional guarantees” could imply Article 371-like provisions which would restore the exclusive rights of people of Jammu and Kashmir on their land, resources and jobs, as has been the case in the North East and Himachal Pradesh.
Rekha Chowdhary, author and former professor of Political Science at the University of Jammu, however, doesn’t read too much into the speech. She said Sinha’s remarks should be interpreted against the backdrop of speculation that the Centre could grant a Delhi-like constitutional status to Jammu and Kashmir.
“When a state is turned into a Union territory, some of the constitutional provisions that apply to the state don’t apply to the Union Territory . My reading is that the LG is referring to the constitutional guarantees that come with statehood for every other state in the country,” she said.
Tempering effect?
Jammu-based analyst and senior editor, Zafar Choudhary, argued that Sinha’s speech was aimed at lowering the “unnecessary potential tensions” that had broken out between Raj Bhawan and the ruling National Conference (NC) party over the issue of UT Day celebrations last week.
“The reference to constitutional guarantees seems to be an attempt to allay the fears that the Centre might retain control on some subjects, such as Home, Finance, etc, even after restoring J&K’s statehood. Therefore, the use of words ‘constitutional guarantees’ implies federal autonomy as is available to every other state,” he said.
A Srinagar-based political analyst, who didn’t want to be named, said that the course of the relationship between Raj Bhawan and Abdullah government was going to be determined by the “precedents that are going to be set and the situations that could arise” in coming months and years in Jammu and Kashmir.
“It is too early to make an assessment (of Sinha’s speech),” the analyst said, “It is a precarious relationship where Abdullah has been speaking of cooperation with the Union government on one hand and there are no conciliatory remarks from the centre on the other, but no hostility either, which used to be the hallmark of the BJP’s politics in Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.
The analyst added: “The LG has the discretion to edit the speech, which is drafted by the government following the parliamentary procedure. If he has done so, then it would mean that he is sending some message. But I believe nothing of that sort has happened”.
NC versus BJP versus an electoral dividend
Analysts also said that the ambiguous phraseology in Sinha’s speech could provide a “dignified political exit” for both the NC as well as the BJP to walk out of the ‘Article 370’ conundrum.
The restoration of J&K’s special status and Article 370 forms the bedrock of NC’s political ideology but it could also become the party’s Achilles’ heel in its negotiations with the Union government led by the BJP which has milked the Article-370 cow for electoral dividends.
However, Hussain observed that Sinha’s speech reflected the failure of the BJP in getting electoral dividends from the reading down of Article 370. Sources said that the Abdullah government was moving ahead with the special status resolution which is likely to be introduced in the assembly later this week.
“One should not overlook the fact that the remarks (of Sinha) have come in the backdrop of the precarious plight of India’s foreign policy after the US joined the call by Ottawa and other Five Eyes partners for a credible probe into the assassination of Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar,” he said.