India’s top court hearing petitions challenging government’s removal of Kashmir’s special status

By SHEIKH SAALIQ and AIJAZ HUSSAIN
Associated Press

NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s top court is hearing petitions challenging the constitutionality of the legislation passed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in 2019 that stripped disputed Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood, scrapped its separate constitution and removed inherited protections on land and jobs. The five-judge constitutional bench on Wednesday is simultaneously hearing petitions challenging the special status granted to the region after its accession with newly independent India in 1947. Such petitions were filed before the 2019 changes. Dividing the region into two territories — Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir — left both run by central government bureaucrats rather than locally elected lawmakers and removed its flag, criminal code and constitution.