New Delhi: A key Kashmir file justifying the insertion of Article 35A into the Indian Constitution has gone missing from the high security vaults of North Block in New Delhi.
The incident comes at a time when the Indian Supreme Court is hearing a petition by an RSS-backed NGO seeking the abrogation of the Article, which bars outsiders from acquiring land in Kashmir. “A 63-year-old file containing legal opinion on Article 35A has vanished from North Block’s high-security vaults at a time the provision, which grants special rights and privileges to permanent residents of Kashmir, faces a legal challenge to its constitutionality,” reported The Telegraph newspaper. “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 August 29,” a senior Indian home ministry official said.
He said the file had disappeared from the Ministry’s legal and administrative records section, perhaps during the Ministry’s Swachh Bharat campaign between June 22 and 26 in 2015 when it weeded out hundreds of old files.
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