Days after being reinstated as an Indian Administrative Service officer, Shah Faesal withdrew his petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Centre’s decision to abrogate Article 370 in August 2019, reported Bar and Bench on Tuesday.
Faesal had quit the civil services in January 2019 in protest against the “unabated killings in Kashmir” and the lack of initiative from the Centre. A couple of months later, he had launched his political party, the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement.
However, last month he was resinstated into the civil services and appointed Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Culture, reported ANI. Faesal’s resignation as an Indian Administrative Service officer, which he withdrew in April, was never accepted by the Centre, according to The Indian Express.
Faesal was one of the 23 petitioners who had challenged the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government’s decision to abrogate the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution.
After the Centre abrogated the provision on August 5, 2019, Faesal was among several Kashmiri politicians who were put under house arrest or detained. In February 2020, Faesal was booked under the stringent Public Safety Act and was charged for advocating “soft separatism” through his social media posts and articles, according to the government.
Under the Public Safety Act the accused can be detained without a trial for three months. Faesal was finally released in June 2020 but the the Jammu and Kashmir administration had put him under house arrest a day after his release.
In August 2020, Faesal announced that he was stepping down from the post of president of Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement and said that he wanted to start life from a “clean slate”.
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