By a clever use of words, the government of Jammu and Kashmir has got away with a patently illegal resolution calling for a new relationship with the rest of India. Worse, the Central government did not educate the country about this illegality while rejecting the June 26 resolution passed by the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly at the behest of the state government. Accordingly, it has left space for this mischief to be perpetrated again at the cost of the nation. Nothing shows more the illegality of what the state legislature did than Section 147 of Jammu and Kashmir's own Constitution. This section bars the introduction or moving of any Bill seeking to make any change in the provisions of the Constitution of India as applicable in relation to the state. The provision of the Constitution of India that applies to the state is Article 370. Under this Article, specific portions of the Constitution and the laws passed by the Union government have been made applicable to the state. The Presidential orders making the Constitution applicable to the state have been issued ``in consultation'' with the state government, when such orders have related to defence, external affairs, communications and ancillary subjects mentioned in the Instrument of Accession to India of October 27, 1947. On other subjects, the orders have been issued ``in concurrence'' with the state government. The state government tried to get around the ban in its own Constitution against the introduction of a Bill seeking to wipe out the Presidential orders and re-do Article 370 itself by introducing a resolution based on the prior illegal act of setting up a committee to draft these changes. Hence the state government tried to do, through the Assembly indirectly in the name of a resolution, what it had been prohibited to do by Section 147 of its Constitution in the name of a Bill. This clever attempt to achieve an illegal and unconstitutional purpose was sought to be covered by use of the politically emotive word ``autonomy''. The media picked up this word without exposing the illegality it sought to cover up. The second patent illegality was that in effect and substance what the state government pushed through the Assembly was a move for secession by attempting to cover it up with declarations of fidelity to the Constitution of India and remaining a part of India. The resolution required doing away completely with the Supreme Court of India which represents India's judicial sovereignty. It wanted to wash out other national institutions mentioned in the Constitution and to which the state is subject through the Presidential orders. The state government was not only questioning the sovereign acts of its predecessor governments and assembly sessions but even what had been done by the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly. Its call for moving back to the Instrument of Accession position meant all this and also that, under the Presidential order of 1954, Parliament should not have the power to make laws for the prevention of activities directed towards disclaiming, questioning or disrupting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India or bringing about a secession of a part of the territory of India. This was to deny the sovereignty of India's Parliament. The Central government's sovereignty was sought to be denied by simply asking for the wholesale abandonment of the constitutional provision relating to Central takeover when the constitutional machinery breaks down. Can anyone say that an illegal resolution that disclaims the Union's judicial and parliamentary powers and the Centre's sovereignty does not amount to a breakdown of the constitutional machinery? This remains the only state of the Union, to which constitutional provisionsand Central laws with or without modification are extended with the consultation or concurrence of the state government. It is the only state that continues to have its own Constitution. For the rest of the country, under Article 253 of the Constitution, Parliament can make any law for implementing any treaty, agreement, convention, or the decision of any international conference, association or other body. Only in the case of this state the Presidential order requires that no decision regarding the ``disposition'' of the state shall be made without the consent of the state government and that no Bill for altering the areas, name or boundary of the state shall be introduced in Parliament without the consent of the state legislature. To ask for something beyond this by using the word `autonomy' is to say that the Union government and Parliament have nothing to do with the state. It is also to say that, while the Union government and Parliament cannot amend the Constitution of India due to the binding Supreme Court judgment in the Keshvananda Bharati case to take away the basic freedoms of the people, the state government can do so because it does not recognise the apex court. If, legally, this is not secession, then what is?
