Seven years after August 2019, Jammu and Kashmir has an elected government, a functioning Assembly and regular official assurances that the situation is normal. On September 28, that Assembly passed a resolution asking the Government of India to do what it had promised long ago, which is to return full statehood. The fact that the House had to ask again, two years after the people voted, says a good deal about where things stand.

The issue does not belong to one party or one region. It concerns anyone who believes that a democracy is judged not only by whether elections are held, but by whether those who win them are allowed to govern.

What The House Has Now Asked 

The resolution is short. It describes itself as coming “In addition to the Resolutions passed by this House on 26th June 2000 and 6th November 2024, this House calls upon the Government of India for the immediate and urgent restoration of full statehood to Jammu and Kashmir and resolves that this Resolution be forwarded to Government of India.” The Chief Minister moved it on September 25. It was passed by voice vote on September 28, after nearly four hours of debate, with BJP members walking out.

A resolution cannot restore statehood by itself, and it was never meant to. It is a request, made on behalf of the people by the House they elected. But it came only after two years of waiting.

The two earlier resolutions it refers to are the ones that angered the BJP, so it is worth recalling what each said.

In 2000, the National Conference government brought the report of the State Autonomy Committee before the House, which had lain on its table since April 1999. After five days of debate in a special session, the House on June 26 recorded "its approval of the same and its acceptance of the recommendations made therein" and asked the Union and state governments to implement them. The report sought a return to the constitutional position before 1953. Members of the BJP, Congress and JD(U) walked out that day. On July 4, the Union Cabinet rejected it, saying that accepting it would turn the clock back.

In November 2024, a few weeks after the present government took office, the House passed a second resolution. It “reaffirms the importance of the special status and constitutional guarantees” and “expresses concern over their unilateral removal”. It also asked the Centre to “initiate dialogue with elected representatives of people of Jammu and Kashmir”. It did not lay down a constitutional formula. It asked for talks. BJP members tore copies of it, and it went through by voice vote amid noise.

This time the Chief Minister kept Articles 370 and 35A out of the text, so that the BJP would have no excuse to disrupt the House. Some members of the ruling side, independents and PDP members moved amendments to bring them back. The Chief Minister asked them to withdraw, saying the House had already passed two resolutions on special status, and they agreed. The Congress, the National Conference, my own party, the PDP and the People's Conference all supported the resolution.

A Bond, Not A Favour

Behind all this lies the question of what Article 370 was. It has too often been described as a privilege granted out of convenience, one that could be withdrawn just as easily. It was the constitutional form of a bond between the people of Jammu and Kashmir and the Union, worked out in the Constituent Assembly of India at a time when the Maharaja hesitated and the people, with no army of their own, chose to link their future with India's national leadership through instrument of accession with several Articles associated with it. That bond was carried forward through the 1952 Delhi Agreement. The state's own Constituent Assembly then examined it and dissolved without recommending any change to the Article.

The Supreme Court upheld the abrogation in December 2023, and I do not question the Court's authority. But a step being held legal does not make it settled in the minds of people who were not consulted. What was done in August 2019 was the alteration of a negotiated relationship by a Parliament in Delhi, and not by the people or the institutions that had shaped it. That is why every grievance below leads back to the same question.

What The Chief Minister Told The House

In his speech on the resolution, the Chief Minister gave the House a list of what an elected government in a Union Territory cannot do. He said two years had passed since the government took office and the promise was still unkept. He asked how the Supreme Court's direction to restore statehood "at the earliest" could stretch to two years. He asked what the Centre means by an "appropriate time", and whether restoration depends on militancy ending. If it does, he said, the decision effectively rests in Islamabad, and not in New Delhi. He added that statehood belongs to the people and not to any party or family.
Then he gave examples from his own government's daily work. Nearly two years after it took office, Jammu and Kashmir still has no Advocate General, even though the government has formally taken up the matter. The Business Rules were sent to the Centre about two years ago and have not been approved, so there is still confusion about who can exercise which power. A committee formed to examine the regularisation of daily wagers has not submitted its report, and the Chief Minister said the reason is that this is a Union Territory.

The decision on reservation shows the same pattern. It was taken by the Cabinet after a sub-committee had studied the issue, and it went to the Lieutenant Governor. The Centre raised queries, the government answered them and forwarded the decision again, and it remains pending. He said the government is told that security and law and order rest with the Lieutenant Governor and the rest with the elected government, and he asked why the Revenue Department and its officers are then kept outside its domain.

He also spoke of institutions that once had a place in the elected government's domain. The Academy of Art, Culture and Languages now come under the Lieutenant Governor. In the universities at Awantipora and Rajouri, the Lieutenant Governor is Chancellor, and the Chief Minister, who held an ex-officio role under the earlier arrangement, now has none. He asked what the problem would be in giving that role back.

None of this is a matter of principle alone. These are files waiting on desks, and people waiting on those files.

The Letters To The Speaker

The most striking part of the speech was about two letters. The Chief Minister told the House that the Chief Secretary and the Law Secretary had written to the Assembly Secretariat asking that the resolution not be taken up. The letters reportedly arrived three days after he moved it, when the House had already admitted it.

He is the Chief Minister and also holds the Law portfolio. He said he knew nothing of the letters and did not know on whose instructions they were sent. A Chief Minister moving a resolution, he said, and his own law secretary offering an opinion on it, could only happen in a Union Territory. The Speaker said he took no notice because no minister had approved them. BJP members who defended the officials said the matter is before the Supreme Court. A PDP member has since given notice of a privilege motion against both officers, and I raised the matter in Zero Hour on Wednesday.
An Assembly does not take direction from its own secretaries on what it may discuss. In a State, no official would try it. That one did here, and without his minister's knowledge, is the clearest picture of the real balance of power.

A Disempowered Ligislature

For two years this House has met, debated and passed laws. But it cannot legislate freely on the subjects that matter most to people, it does not control the police, and it has little said over the officers who run the administration it is supposed to oversee. That is representation without responsibility. It should trouble every democrat, and not only those from Jammu and Kashmir.

I said as much in the House on September 21. I said the legislature itself has been left without power, and that this is why people feel let down. I said the rights of ordinary citizens have been curtailed and arbitrary decision-making has grown since 2019. People voted in 2024 believing that an elected government would be able to answer them. Two years on, many feel the vote was treated as an event to be managed and not a mandate to be honoured.

Security With Confidence 

The administration points to lower incident figures and visible calm as proof that security has improved, and in some respects it has. But security counted in checkpoints, verification drives and surveillance is not the same as security built on public confidence. The two get confused, and the confusion has a cost.

The events after the killing of a police head constable in Anantnag on July 22 showed this. The killing was condemned by everyone, including the Chief Minister. In the hours and days after it, thousands were reportedly picked up for questioning across the Valley, and the homes of two men suspected of involvement were demolished the next morning, before any trial. The Chief Minister himself said that mass detentions and demolitions would not help restore normalcy. Accountability for violence is necessary and nobody disputes that. But it has to be kept apart from collective punishment, which strikes families who had no hand in the act and is very hard to undo once a house has been razed or a young person has spent a night in custody.

The same anxiety runs through the verification system. A young person who fears that an old case against a relative, or a flag in some record, will cost them a job or a passport does not feel safer for the extra scrutiny. They feel watched. Political parties, my own included, have repeatedly found that routine meetings of office-bearers need permission that is neither granted nor refused until the day has passed. A democracy is also defined by whether citizens can organise and speak without first seeking an administration's clearance. Trust has to be built deliberately, through transparent processes and visible restraint, and cannot be assumed from the absence of unrest.

Jammu Has Not Gained Either

The BJP says it too wants statehood and objects only to the reference to autonomy. Its members also moved to remove the Speaker for allowing the resolution. Whatever the argument's merits, it turns a demand for statehood into a quarrel between regions. The BJP wants this to look like Kashmir against Jammu. It is not.

People in Jammu were told after 2019 that the change would benefit them. The Darbar Move, the 149-year-old practice of shifting the government between Srinagar and Jammu, was ended in 2021, and Jammu's traders shut their markets that year. Their complaints included mining contracts going to outsiders, liquor shop auctions that left local vendors out, and large retail chains that small shopkeepers cannot match. Officers from outside the cadre hold key posts. Under the 2020 domicile rules, anyone with 15 years of residence can apply for a domicile certificate, and many in Jammu worry about land and jobs. Attacks in places like Reasi and Kathua have unsettled areas that had been quiet for years.

The people of Jammu have lost the same thing as the people of Kashmir, which is the ordinary right to be governed by those they elect. That is true whatever one thinks of 2019.

The Promise

The promise has been repeated by those now asking for patience. The Home Minister told Parliament in August 2019 that statehood would be restored at an appropriate time. The Supreme Court in December 2023 directed that it be restored at the earliest. During the 2024 campaign, rallies in Jammu and Srinagar were told that statehood would follow the elections. The elections were held and a government was formed. Two years later there is still no date.

What Must Happen

The demand for statehood must come with one voice, from Jammu and from Kashmir, and from parties that disagree on much else. It is not a favour to any party, as the Chief Minister said, and it is not a concession to one region. BJP members sit in this House on the votes of people in Jammu who live under the same arrangement.

The Centre can debate Article 370 and autonomy for as long as it likes. Statehood is a separate matter, because it was promised in Parliament and from public platforms and the highest court has directed it. Whatever the decision on those larger questions, the minimum that can be done for both regions is to give back full statehood, and to say when.


The auther is a political leader from Jammu and Kashmir, India, affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The views expressed are personal.