From the J&K Re-organisation Act to future amendments, the changes in the electoral map of Jammu and Kashmir are designed to suit the BJP electorally. However, there will be many other factors at play, that will blunt these advantages.

The pigmy version of the new Modi government knows that the BJP has no electoral opportunity in the region and that is why the region remains disenfranchised.

It may serve little purpose to dispel some of the myths around Article 370, now that India’s apex court appears have given its legal sanctity to some of them. Yet, truth must be told even long after the damage has been done.

For the people of Jammu and Kashmir, what was lost was not just the special status of J&K with its emotive appeal but also the privileges and protections it gave to the residents of J&K.

Actions on NewsClick surpass some of the most brazen and high-handed methods adopted in Kashmir. The charges in the FIR are not only vague, but also aimed at casting a wider net with an intent to rope in many other journalists, activists, academics, and lawyers – anybody seen as a dissenter by a paranoid state.

Peripheral states are often seen to be not really ‘Indian’ and to be held by militarised force.