On August 5, the Narendra Modi government made the monumental decision to change the status of Jammu and Kashmir.
On Thursday, India wakes up witness to another, albeit very different, instance of its tryst with destiny. As Wednesday came to an end, on the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world slept, the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Ladakh awakened to a new future. India now officially has one state less and two Union Territories more - J&K and Ladakh, i.e. India now has 28 states and nine union territories.
The Union Territory of Ladakh will not have a legislative assembly and will be directly governed by the Home Ministry at the Centre via an appointed Lieutenant-Governor, like Andaman and Nicobar Islands. A former civil servant, Radha Krishna Mathur, will take office as the Lieutenant-Governor of Ladakh.
Jammu and Kashmir will have its own elected legislature and government, presided over by the appointed Lieutenant-Governor, more or less like the Delhi and Puducherry models. G C Murmu, a former bureaucrat from PM Modi’s home state of Gujarat, will be sworn in as the first lieutenant governor of the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
People from all over the country are now closer to having the right to buy and own property in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Till now, only permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir had the right to own property in the state. And the power to decide who would qualify as a permanent resident was left in the hands of the Jammu and Kashmir government. This power was granted to the J&K government by Article 35A, which was repealed by Monday's Presidential Order.
The right of all Indians to own property in Jammu and Kashmir will require further official work, which would have to be operationalised once the Home Ministry takes charge of the Union Territory.
Ladakh will no longer have Assembly elections. The only elections people of the region will vote in will be Lok Sabha elections.
Ladakh will now be able to seek specific attention from the Centre, now that its fate is no longer tied to Jammu and Kashmir.
The two districts of the Ladakh Division - Leh and Kargil - already enjoy some level of autonomy and are partially governed by Autonomous Hill Development Councils, which are likely to be allowed to continue their functioning.
On August 5, the Narendra Modi government made the monumental decision to change the status of Jammu and Kashmir. Through a Presidential Order, the government declared that Article 370 would cease to be operative, and specifically overrode a previous order that made Article 35A a part of the Constitution of India, thereby ending the special status accorded to the region.
Soon after the Article 370 abrogation, several regional political leaders were put under detention by the Jammu and Kashmir administration and restrictions imposed on the movement of people, vehicles, telephone, mobile phones and internet.
Incidentally, the new UTs will be born on the National Unity Day, marked as the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first home minister and freedom fighter.
The government is looking to take this opportunity to ramp up infrastructure, investment and tourism opportunities in the region, as well as integrating it in essence with the rest of India, as J&K has long been marked with separatist fires, fueled in turn by the special status enjoyed by it.
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 "Jammu and Kashmir (File Photo)")
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