The Centre has notified new laws enforced immediately, including fresh land laws, for the Union Territories (UTs) of J&K and Ladakh and omitted any precondition on purchase of land in J&K, as existed under Article 370 for the outsiders.
These new laws mean that anyone can now buy land in Kashmir as far as it is not agricultural land.
The order has been called the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Adaptation of Central Laws) Third Order, 2020.
Earlier, because of the existence of Article 35A, the purchase of land by citizens of other states of India was prohibited in Jammu and Kashmir.
Jammu and Kashmir legislature was allowed to define permanent residents of the state and only they were permitted to purchase land or property.
“Unacceptable amendments to the land ownership laws of J&K. Even the tokenism of domicile has been done away with when purchasing non-agricultural land & transfer of agricultural land has been made easier. J&K is now up for sale & the poorer small land holding owners will suffer,” Abdullah tweeted.
In a sarcastic comment, Abdullah claimed that “J&K is now up for sale”.
Najam u Saqib, PDP spokesperson told The Kashmiriyat that the India government is trying to exploit the sentiments of the larger audience by using Kashmir issue as fodder for their own banks.
“The PDP will fight for the restoration of special status and that will not be our ultimate goal. For now we will fight collectively the restoration of the special status.”
He added “The Kashmiri’s will not remain silent on these attempts to make any changes to the demography. We will not tolerate any amendments that are intended to bring cultural changes.”