NEW DELHI, Dec 11, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - India's top court upheld on Monday a
move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to revoke the limited
autonomy of Muslim-majority Kashmir, where an insurgency has raged for
decades, and ordered elections within a year.

The 2019 declaration was "a culmination of the process of integration and as
such is a valid exercise of power", the Supreme Court said in its verdict.

The move was accompanied by the imposition of direct rule from New Delhi,
mass arrests, a total lockdown and communication blackout that ran for months
as India bolstered its armed forces in the region to contain protests.

Modi's muscular policy has been deeply controversial in Kashmir but was
widely celebrated across India, with the insurgency that claimed tens of
thousands of lives over decades largely quietened.

The removal of Article 370 of the constitution, which enshrined the Indian-
administered region's special status, was challenged by Kashmir's pro-India
political parties, the local Bar Association and individual litigants,
culminating in Monday's verdict.

The court upheld removing the region's autonomy while calling for Jammu &
Kashmir, as the Delhi-administered area is known, to be restored to statehood
and put on a par with any other Indian state "at the earliest and as soon as
possible".

The court also ordered state elections to take place by September 30, 2024.

Security was stepped up across Indian-administered Kashmir ahead of the
verdict, with authorities deploying hundreds of soldiers, paramilitary
troops, and police in the main city of Srinagar to thwart any protests.

Modi welcomed the judgement as "historic".

It was "a beacon of hope, a promise of a brighter future and a testament to
our collective resolve to build a stronger, more united India", the Hindu
nationalist leader posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Removing Article 370 has been a key plank of his Bharatiya Janata Party's
platform since its inception, and the Supreme Court decision comes ahead of
elections next year.

Former Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti -- who governed in coalition
with the BJP but whose party was among the litigants in the Supreme Court
case -- condemned the ruling as a "death sentence not just for Jammu and
Kashmir but also for the idea of India".

- 'Moral compass' -

One of the advocates who argued for the revocation to be ruled
unconstitutional was sanguine.

"Some battles are fought to be lost," Kapil Sibal posted on X, even before
the verdict was read out, saying the court action was intended to ensure that
"history must record the uncomfortable facts for generations to know".

"History alone is the final arbiter of the moral compass of historic
decisions," he added.

Since the suspension of Article 370, Indian authorities have curbed media
freedoms and public protests in a drastic curtailment of civil liberties.

The changes allowed Indians from outside the region to buy land in it and
seek government jobs and education scholarships, a policy denounced by
critics as "settler colonialism".

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the neighbours were
granted independence from British rule and partitioned in 1947, when its
Hindu maharajah chose to join the new secular and federal Union of India.

Initially, New Delhi controlled only foreign affairs, currency and
communication, but over the decades Kashmir's pro-India leaders cooperated
with national authorities to dilute the provision.

Both India and Pakistan claim the Himalayan former kingdom in full and the
nuclear-armed rivals have fought two wars over the region.

More than half a million Indian soldiers are deployed in the territory to
control the insurgency, which erupted in 1989.

Over 120 people have been killed in 2023, two-thirds of them militants, a
fraction of the four-figure tolls of past years.

India blames Pakistan for backing the militants, a charge Islamabad denies,
saying it only supports a Kashmiri struggle for the right to self-
determination.

Pakistan's foreign minister Jalil Abbas Jilani called the court decision "a
travesty of justice".

"India has no right to make unilateral decisions on the status of this
disputed territory against the will of the Kashmiri people and Pakistan," he
told reporters in Islamabad.

"Their ultimate goal is to convert the Kashmiris into a disempowered
community in their own land."