Month May 2014

1.Similar protections for unique status exist in tribal areas of India including those in Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Nagaland. However, it is only for the state of Jammu and Kashmir that the accession of the state to India is still a matter of dispute between India and Pakistan still on the agenda of the UN Security Council and where the Government of India vide 1974 Indira-Sheikh accord committed itself to keeping the relationship between the Union and Jammu and Kashmir State within the ambit of this article.

Why?

Because it has Muslim population or is it because Sheikh Abdullah is Nehru's step brother?

2.In notifications issued as far back as 1927 and 1932, the state created various categories of residents – with some being called permanent residents (PRs) with special rights.

Though the law did not discriminate between female and male PRs, an administrative rule made it clear that women could remain PRs only till marriage. After that they had to seek a fresh right to remain PRs.

And if a woman married someone who wasn’t a Kashmiri PR, she automatically lost her own PR status. In 2004, the state high court, in the case of State of J&K vs Sheela Sawhney, declared that there was no provision in the existing law dealing with the status of a female PR who married a non-resident.

The provision of women losing their PR status after marrying outside the state, therefore, did not have any legal basis.

This decision was historic because it corrected an administrative anomaly and brought relief to women who married outside the state.