Justice Sarkaria says J-K solution lies in Constitution

According to him, except for certain key areas like national security, defence and external affairs, “the Centre can easily give more powers to the state, at least in practice. The moment you do this, everything will be resolved. Article 370, other separatist demands in the North-East, nothing will matter.”

He described as unfortunate and even dangerous the demand of the RSS to abolish Article 370 at this stage. He said this could only cause more trouble and even lend Pakistan a propaganda weapon. In any case, Justice Sarkaria pointed out, the Article had been “watered down” over the years and J-K did not have many powers under it today.

He also found it amusing that those politicians who had scoffed at and violated his report earlier were now citing it as the solution to the Centre-state crisis. A case in point was Article 356, he said, which had been misused by all parties. “These parties only talk of federalism. They do not implement it in practice,” Justice Sarkaria remarked.