Key 1954 Legal File on Article 35A Goes Missing From Home Ministry

The file contained the then attorney general’s justification for inserting the article into the Constitution.

The Jammu-centric BJP and the Valley-centric PDP are politically “destined” to oppose each other over Article 35A.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

As the controversy around Article 35A, that grants special privileges to permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir comes into controversy, a key file that contains legal opinion on the Article has gone missing from the North Block, reports The Telegraph.

The 63-year-old file contained the 1954 attorney general's justification for the insertion of Article 35A into the Constitution that year, through a Presidential order and not a constitutional amendment.

Our employees are frantically searching for the file which is crucial to the case, as we have to convey our stand in the Supreme Court at the next hearing on 29 August.

<i>The Telegraph</i> quoted a senior Union Home Ministry official

The official said that the file may have been misplaced from the ministry’s legal and administrative records section during the ministry's Swachh Bharat campaign, when it threw out hundreds of old files.

"[The attorney general] had recently asked for the 1954 file, which is when we realised that it had disappeared,” the official said.

The Supreme Court is currently hearing a petition that has sought the scrapping of the article, arguing that it never met the Parliament's approval. The Delhi-based NGO, We the Citizens, at the heart of this petition is a Sangh-backed organisation.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, whose party is allied with the BJP in the state, had earlier met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to warn against the “dilution” of the article.

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