The Kashmir chapter of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association has amended its constitution to remove a paragraph that called for “working towards a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir dispute”, reported The Hindu on Sunday.
The association now concerns itself only with promoting “the rights and interests of the legal profession in general and of the members of the Association in particular”, according to the newspaper. The lawyers’ body has about 3,000 members.
In 2020, the Srinagar district magistrate had asked for an explanation of the now-removed text, which was included in a section about the association’s objectives. It stated that the bar “will find ways and means and take steps for resolving the issues concerning the public at large including the larger issue of a peaceful settlement of Kashmir dispute”.
The magistrate claimed that the paragraph was “not in consonance with the Constitution of India, whereby J&K is an integral part of the country and not a dispute”.
In a letter on Friday, the bar association said: “Some changes in the constitution of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association, Kashmir, also became necessary [after the Supreme Court judgement on Article 370 provisions on December 23, 2023] and, accordingly, were brought about.”
“It is not naysaid that JKHCBA was one amongst many political, social and non-governmental organisations, recognised under law, who had invoked jurisdiction of the Hon’ble Supreme Court against the constitutional changes that had taken place in August 2019,” the lawyers’ body added.
In August 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government had abrogated Article 370 of the Constitution and bifurcated the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union territories.
In December, the Supreme Court in its verdict on petitions challenging the Centre’s decision directed the Union government to restore Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood “at the earliest and as soon as possible”. The court also set September 2024 as the deadline for the Election Commission to conduct elections for the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly that is to be restored.
The Jammu and Kashmir lieutenant governor’s administration has declined permission to the bar association to conduct its own elections in the past five years, reported The Hindu. The polls have been disallowed on various grounds including law and order concerns, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
In June, the district magistrate had imposed fresh restrictions on the bar association elections under a provision of the Code of Criminal Procedure dealing with unlawful assembly (section 144). It was alleged that the association’s past activities were suggestive of a “secessionist ideology”.
In its Friday letter, however, the body responded: “The JKHCBA is as old as the High Court of J&K...Each one has held each other in high regard over the period and have exchanged their members as necessary concomitant…Demonising and maligning such an Association and/or characterising it being illegal/unregistered after hundred years of its existence, therefore, is highly unacceptable.”
“It goes without saying that all citizens of the country have fundamental right to form association under Article 19 (1)(c) of the Constitution of India and such right cannot be made illusory by imposing curbs on its functioning and in this case in the garb of colourable exercise of power under section 144 CrPC,” the association said. “There is no reason as to why elections of the Bar Association cannot be conducted peacefully, freely and fairly.”
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