Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud said Article 35A, which empowered the Jammu and Kashmir Legislature to define “permanent residents” of the State and provide them special privileges, denied fundamental rights to others.
“Article 35A gave special rights and privileges to permanent residents and virtually took away the rights for non-residents. These rights included the right to equal opportunity of State employment, right to acquire property and the right to settle in Jammu and Kashmir,” Chief Justice Chandrachud, heading a Constitution Bench, observed on August 28.
‘Permanent residents’ included people who were hereditary State subjects as in 1927, when J&K was a princely state prior to its accession to the Indian Dominion in 1947. Article 35A, which was introduced through the Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 1954 issued by the President under Article 370, demarcated permanent residents with exclusive right to purchase land, seek State government employment and other benefits in education and health care. The others, called ‘non-permanent residents’, were not privy to these privileges.
