By Raja Muzaffar Bhat

Three years ago, on this day, the Government of India abrogated Article 370. With this, the government scrapped the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. 

On August 5, 2019, the Union Home Minister Amit Shah introduced the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill, 2019 in the Rajya Sabha and eventually, the status of Jammu and Kashmir as a state was converted into two separate union territories. The two UTs – the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the union territory of Ladakh came into existence on 31 October the same year, and the day was marked as the National Unity Day. It is also a day celebrated to mark the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhai Patel, who played a major role in the integration of India. 

​​Three years have passed since the abrogation of Article 370. Still, the ordinary resident of J&K continues to fight long and arduous legal battles to avail the rights they ought to have under the central laws of the government of India. 

During our investigation, we met with many people whose access to the central laws was cut and old and archaic laws were imposed on them. Let’s take a look at Bashir Ahmed Bhat’s story. Bashir runs a small grocery store in Srinagar’s New Theed (Haripora) village. Bashir, who comes from a poor lower middle-class family, did not have the means to get an education. But he wanted to get his children educated. The proceeds from the grocery store helped Bashir and his wife Mumtaz to provide quality education to their three children. 

His elder son Irfan Hashim completed his PHD in Journalism a few months ago from Kashmir University, and his second son Umar Bashir is a doctor with an MD in Medical Oncology. Bashir’s daughter Saima was married a few years back and is a postgraduate in Environmental Science. 

For many years Bashir had been planning to renovate his grocery store and expand his small business, but he spent all his savings on his children’s education. Kashmir is a small valley surrounded by mountains with very small patches of agricultural land.

Read the full story here:- https://theprobe.in/article-370-abrogation-many-central-laws-still-not-implemented-in-jammu-kashmir/