local-officials-subverting-article-370-abrogation-in-j-k

While five years have passed since the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution, its implementation at the ground level remains a challenge. Local officials are not only hostile towards people who come from the rest of the country to purchase land but make their lives tough.

 

News Arena India possesses details and documents about a Punjab resident (whose identity is being withheld for obvious reasons), who, after having purchased land in Kashmir and getting all due permissions, is not allowed to construct anything on that land. 

 

It is a struggle against all odds for that person who has written to the Prime Minister seeking his help and intervention to ensure that he is allowed to construct a small structure for which he had purchased that land after the abrogation of Article 370.

 

In his touching letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he sought his kind attention to “how some local officials in the local administration in Kashmir are subverting and sabotaging the ‘Abrogation of Article 370’, by not only discouraging people from outside J&K to purchase land but also harassing them”.

 

He said he was “narrating the harsh personal experience so that necessary and strong action may be taken to ensure that others who want to buy land in Kashmir are not discouraged and harassed”.

 

He said, “like every nationalistic and patriotic countryman, I also felt happy over the abrogation of Article 370. I decided to purchase land in Kashmir. I bought ‘2 kanals’ of land in a village (name of the village being withheld) Kashmir valley in October 2023”.

 

He said, he wanted to construct a hut there. Different departments gave him all the necessary permissions and ‘no objection certificates’. 

 

However, a local officer created hurdles in his construction, with a clear motive and intention in defiance of the new law after the abrogation of Article 370. So much so, that the particular officer got his under-construction structure demolished when he had all the permissions and NOCs, including one by the office of the same officer.

 

The particular officer was making an excuse that his land was falling in an area where no construction was allowed. This was just an excuse as he had produced all the evidence that the area was outside the “no construction zone”.

 

The particular officer even got false and fabricated news published in various local newspapers, alleging that he had got the permission illegally. This was done to send a message to all the local officials so that they discourage anyone from the rest of the country from purchasing the land there. 

 

“It was only an excuse to discourage and harass someone from outside Kashmir so that a message gets conveyed across that outsiders are not welcome to buy property or construct houses or huts in Kashmir, even when Article 370 had been abrogated”, the aggrieved person wrote in his letter to the Prime Minister.

 

“Like any patriotic and nationalist Indian, I feel pained and hurt that I am still not being allowed to construct a hut in Kashmir, that is part of my country and even after Article 370 was abrogated’, he said.

 

He wrote to the Prime Minister that he only wanted to flag this for his kind attention. “Mine is a test case. I may be among the first, or may be the only outsider who started constructing a structure there, which is not being tolerated by those who are opposed to the abrogation of Article 370”.