Article 35A is a highly emotive issue linked to the rights of Jammu and Kashmir residents
Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's massive re-election, the BJP had pledged to end Article 35A for Jammu and Kashmir. With the Kashmir Valley now in lockdown and top leaders placed under house arrest in Srinagar, the expectation is that Article 35A will be announced as scrapped when Home Minister Amit Shah addresses parliament this morning.
Here is your 5-point guide to this law:
Article 35A of the Constitution, adopted in 1954, empowers Jammu and Kashmir's legislature to decide who are the state's residents and to confer special rights and privileges on them.
Residents are defined as those who lived in the region when the law was approved in 1954 or those who have lived in the state for 10 consecutive years after that and own property there.
Article 35A bans outsiders from owning property in the state so that the area's demographics are not significantly altered; they cannot get government jobs or scholarships in state-run educational institutions. Women who marry non-residents did not have the right to own property till a court order in 2002 changed that. Those acknowledged as residents are given a certificate establishing them as permanent residents.
Article 35A, which has been challenged in the Supreme Court, was added to the Constitution through a presidential order without parliament's review.
The BJP holds that the law is discriminatory; former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has described it as "constitutionally vulnerable" while alleging it denied Kashmir "a booming economy, economic activity and jobs."
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