• Special status for occupied Kashmir scrapped by India • Bill to bifurcate occupied J&K cleared by Rajya Sabha • New Delhi’s sinister move met by massive protest from opposition • Pakistan to ‘exercise all possible options’ to counter it

NEW DELHI/OCCUPIED SRINAGAR: India on Monday revoked the special status of occupied Kashmir, moving to grasp its only Muslim-majority region more tightly.

In the most far-reaching political move in one of the world’s most militarised regions in nearly seven decades, India said it would scrap a constitutional provision that allows its state of Jammu and Kashmir to make its own laws. “The entire constitution will be applicable to Jammu and Kashmir,” Union Minister Amit Shah told parliament, as opposition lawmakers voiced loud protests against the repeal.

The government also lifted a ban on property purchases by non-residents, opening the way for Indians to invest and settle there, just as they can elsewhere in India, although the measure is likely to provoke a backlash in the region.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, convulsed by a nearly 30-year freedom struggle in which tens of thousands of people have died, with hundreds of thousands of Indian troops deployed to quell it.

Hours earlier the Indian government launched a security crackdown in the region, arresting local leaders, suspending telephone and internet services and restricting public movement in the main city of Srinagar.

Regional leaders have previously said stripping Kashmir’s special status amounts to aggression against its people.

The streets in Srinagar were largely deserted as travel curbs kept people indoors, said a Reuters photographer who found a telephone connection in a restaurant near the city’s airport.

There was heavy deployment of security forces across Srinagar, but no signs of protest.

A top government source in New Delhi told reporters the restrictions were precautionary, adding that life was expected to return to normal fairly soon.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had pushed for radical political change in Kashmir even before he won re-election in May, saying its laws hindered integration with the rest of India.

“Politically, it’s advantage BJP,” said Happymon Jacob, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in the Indian capital.

“The scrapping of Article 370 of the constitution is likely to set off a slew of political, constitutional and legal battles, not to speak of the battles on the streets of Kashmir.”

Introduced decades ago, the constitutional provisions reserved government jobs and college places for Kashmir’s residents, among other limits aiming to keep people from other parts of the country from overrunning the state.

The government has also decided to split the state into two federal territories, one formed by Jammu and Kashmir, and the other consisting of the enclave of Ladakh, citing internal security considerations. Turning the state into a federal territory allows Delhi to exert greater control.

“Today marks the darkest day in Indian democracy,” said one of the leaders placed under house arrest, Mehbooba Mufti, a former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.

“It will have catastrophic consequences for the subcontinent,” she said in a post on Twitter.

India’s interior ministry ordered all states to put security forces on “maximum alert” to maintain public order and quash the spread of any rumours.

Ram Madhav, general secretary of Modi’s BJP, hailed the government’s actions as ushering in a “glorious day”. In Modi’s home state of Gujarat, people shouted slogans of support on the streets.

In AJ&K, however, there was anger at India, with protests extending to Islamabad and centre of Karachi.

In Muzaffarabad, dozens of protesters held black flags and burnt car tyres, chanting “Down with India”. In July, Trump said Modi had asked him if he would like to be a mediator on Kashmir.

Critics of India’s Hindu nationalist-led government see the move as an attempt to dilute the demographics of Muslim-majority Kashmir with Hindu settlers.

The announcement came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi convened a Cabinet meeting and the government’s top-decision making body on security matters, the Cabinet Committee on Security, which he heads. The president of the AJ&K, Sardar Masood Khan, also rejected the Indian presidential order and said it could lead to a war with Pakistan. Government officials said the presidential order will take effect after it is approved by Parliament, which is controlled by Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Shah also introduced the “Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Bill” which, if passed, would split the state into two union territories — Jammu and Kashmir, which will have an elected legislature, and Ladakh, which will be ruled directly by the central government without a legislature of its own.

Currently, the state of Jammu and Kashmir comprises three regions: Hindu-majority Jammu, Muslim-majority Kashmir and Buddhist-majority Ladakh.

The reaction in Ladakh, a pristine, sparsely populated area that stretches from the Siachen Glacier to the Himalayas, was mixed, said Tsewang Gyalson, a guide whose family’s roots are centuries deep.

“Some fear that people from outside will come and start business or will buy lands. Maybe slowly our identity will disappear,” he said.

India’s former finance minister, Arun Jaitley, hailed the government’s decision to remove Article 370, praising Modi and Shah for “correcting a historical blunder.”

“A historical wrong has been undone today,” he tweeted.

Regional parties in Jammu and Kashmir had earlier called attempts to revoke Article 370 an aggression against the people.

The provision dates to 1927, when an order by the administration of the then-princely state of Jammu and Kashmir gave its subjects exclusive hereditary rights. Two months after India won independence from British rule in August 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh, the ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, signed a Treaty of Accession for the state to join the rest of the union, formalized in Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.

Further discussions culminated in the 1952 Delhi Agreement, a presidential order that extended Indian citizenship to the residents of the state but left the maharaja’s privileges for residents intact.

Late Sunday in Kashmir, government forces laid steel barricades and razor wire on roads and intersections to cut off neighborhoods in Srinagar, the region’s main city. The government issued a security order banning public meetings, rallies and movement and said schools would be closed.

Authorities also suspended internet services on cellphones, a common tactic to prevent anti-India demonstrations from being organized and to stop the dissemination of news.

The order affects about 7 million people living in the region, including journalists who faced difficulties in relaying information to the outside world.

It was unclear when the security measures would be lifted, or the extent to which many Kashmiris were aware of the presidential order being debated in Parliament, since access had been cut off.

The security deployment in recent days added at least 10,000 soldiers and other forces in Kashmir, which was already one of the world’s most militarized regions. India also ordered thousands of tourists and Hindu pilgrims to leave the region.

Tensions also have soared along the Line of Control.

Modi and his Hindu nationalist party won reelection early this year on a platform that included promises to do away with special rights for Kashmiris. In a statement, Amnesty International India said the move could “cause unrest and wide scale protests in the state.”

Freedom fighters in Indian occupied Kashmir have been waging a struggle Indian control since 1989. Most Kashmiris support the rebels’ demand that the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country, while also participating in civilian street protests against Indian control. About 70,000 people have been killed in the uprising and the ensuing Indian crackdown.

The move is set to exacerbate the already bloody rebellion in Kashmir and deepen the long-running animosity with nuclear rival Pakistan which has fought two out of three wars with India over the territory.

“There will be a very strong reaction in Kashmir. It’s already in a state of unrest and this will only make it worse,” Wajahat Habibullah, a former senior bureaucrat in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, told AFP.

India’s imposition of an unprecedented communications blackout on occupied Jammu and Kashmir hours before stripping its only Muslim-majority state of special rights in place for decades was sharply criticised on Monday by media and rights groups.

One senior journalist accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of humiliating residents of the divided Himalayan region while others warned that heavy-handedness risked triggering fresh unrest.

The government said the clampdown on telecommunications and media services, which began late on Sunday night and was still in effect almost 24 hours later, was needed to curb any potential violence.

Kashmiris, however, complained that the attempt by Modi’s government to control the flow of information had made it difficult for them to find out what was happening in the state, let alone air their views.

The constitutional change announced on Monday withdraws special rights conferred on residents of the state, including a provision that prevents outsiders buying property there. It also means that college places and state government jobs may no longer be reserved for permanent residents.

Mobile and internet services have previously been cut off in occupied Kashmir at times of turmoil, but this time the government also blacked out landlines and cable television networks.

A top government official, who declined to be identified, told reporters in New Delhi the restrictions were precautionary and that life was expected to return to normal fairly soon.

But activists and editors warned there is a danger that such an attack on civil liberties will further alienate people in the state and increase the risk of further human rights violations.

“What J&K (Jammu and Kashmir) has been witnessing over the last few days — the additional deployment of thousands of security forces, a blanket blockade of telephone and internet services, restrictions on peaceful assembly — has already pushed the people of occupied J&K to the edge,” said Aakar Patel, head of Amnesty International India. In some parts of the occupied state, authorities invoked a law that allows them to ban gatherings of more than four people, and some local political leaders were put under house arrest.

The government had already moved tens of thousands of additional forces to occupied Jammu and Kashmir, already one of the world’s most militarised regions.

“Already under house arrest and not allowed to have visitors either. Not sure how long I’ll be able to communicate,” said Mehbooba Mufti, the most recent chief minister. Some historians and senior Indian journalists were also highly critical. “A straight question: what do you think of shutting down an entire occupied state and detaining former chief ministers before taking a fateful decision that affects that state and its peoples?” asked prominent historian and columnist Ramachandra Guha. Journalists working from the occupied Srinagar and other parts of occupied Kashmir struggled to get information out. “Other than blocking journalists’ access, the government has humiliated the people of Kashmir by shutting down their entire state,” said Sagarika Ghose, an author and the consulting editor of the Times of India newspaper.—Agencies