India Rejects Protest

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30626, 17 December 1964, Page 19

India Rejects Protest

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) NEW DELHI, Dec. 16. The Indian Government has declared it will reject a protest from Pakistan on a plan to tighten the central Government’s potential control over the disputed State of Jammu and Kashmir, the “New York Times” reported yesterday. The Prime Minister, Mr Lal Bahadur Shastri, has told the

Pakistan High Commissioner (Mr Arshad Hussein) in a private meeting that the protest is “unfounded” and is “interference in internal Indian affairs.” The protest was made at the beginning of the week through the Indian High Commission in Karachi and

was repeated in Delhi by Mr Hussein, who called on Mr Shastri yesterday. Pakistan, which contests India’s claim to Jammu and Kashmir, objected to an announced plan to extend to Jammu and Kashmir a constitutional provision for suspending local self-govern-ment in any other state where the central Government decides normal administrative

machinery is breaking down. The clause was recently applied to the southern state of Kerala, when the state Assembly dismissed the Minister of the ruling Congress Party. The projected change in Kashmir’s status will not require a constitutional amendment. An article of the Federal constitution excepting Kashmir from the general rule on suspension of self-govern-ment also provides for its own nullification or limitation by Presidential proclamation. Consequently, the Federal Government decision is seen as reflecting anxiety that the present Kashmiri Government of Mr G. M. Sadiq may be unseated. Part of the threat comes from a former Premier, Mr Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, who was released on Monday after nearly three months in gaol. He was arrested in September under emergency de-fence-of-India rules, when he and his supporters threatened to push a no-confidence motion against the Sadiq Government.

Mr Bakshi had been regarded as an advocate of closer bonds between Kashmir and India, but there is also a threat to Mr Sadiq from Kashmiri nationalist groups which demand selfdetermination and the right of secession for the disputed territory.