MEDIA reports and politicians’ statements have stated that revoking Indian-occupied Kashmir’s special status is a contravention of United Nations resolutions. This is incorrect.

India initiated a sly ploy in occupied Jammu and Kashmir in September 1951 and set up a puppet constituent assembly with a single political party which elected Sheikh Abdullah as prime minister. This puppet assembly passed a resolution declaring Kashmir’s accession to India. This dirty trick did not go unchallenged and the UN Security Council passed Resolution 91 (1951) and Resolution 98 (1952) rescinding all previous resolutions.

Resolutions 91 and 98 provide that: “the question of the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan would be decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the UN.”

A few years later the then Indian chief justice intervened and proclaimed that state elections with a single party was against the Indian constitution, and elections should be contested between at least two parties. The Indian government responded by putting up a second party and holding sham elections, bringing their pliant party in the assembly and repeating the accession to India in January 1957. Noting the Indian persistence, the UNSC passed Resolution 122 (1957). Resolution 122 states: “….. reaffirms the affirmation in its resolution 91 (1951) and declares that the convening of a Constituent Assembly by the General Council of the All J & K National Conference and any action that: Assembly may have taken or might attempt to take to determine the future shape and affiliation of the entire State or any part thereof, or action by the parties concerned of any such action by the Assembly, would not constitute a disposition of the State in accordance with the above principle.”

Since 1957 India has tried to convince the UNSC that it was the requirement of the Indian constitution for states under its rule to have assemblies with direct democratic elections, and introduced the ‘special status’ only to appease the UN. The United Nations was not taken in by this Indian ploy, and the UN made it clear that nothing could replace the holding of a plebiscite.

Rafi Ahmed
Karachi

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2019