Jammu and Kashmir is a union territory in northern India. It comprises two major regions: Jammu and the Kashmir Valley. A third region, Ladakh, along with Jammu and Kashmir, was a part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir until 2019. After the abrogation of Article 370, the state was broken into two: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. The region is known for breathtaking landscapes with a history going back to the Indus Valley Civilization, with evidence of various empires — Gandhara, Mauryan, Kushan, Gupta, Mughal, and Dogra — ruling the area.
The region has been a bone of contention between India and Pakistan since its 1947 accession to India. The two countries fought a war that resulted in the establishment of the Line of Control (LoC) and divided the region into Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. Both Pakistan and China claim portions of Indian-administered Kashmir and Ladakh regions. It has been marred with violent incidents of militancy, which gained momentum in the 1980s and 1990s. The situation, fuelled by various grievances including political alienation, human rights abuses, and economic disparities, has resulted in prolonged conflict and counterinsurgency operations by security forces.
From the photo, it looks like Omar Abdhllah is becoming Mulla Omar. Remember who he is? The Afghan Taliban leader under whom Indian Airlines aircraft was hijacked to Kandahar. These leaders will be more acceptable to the public if they come out of this medieval garb of orthodoxy.
What brought about the end of 370& 35A was the ethnic cleansing and the failure of the successive state governments to bring to book the perpetrators which was nothing short of connivance. The rulers of those days have consigned themselves to the trashcan of history by paying for the sins.
The assembly was disempowered on the day when Sheikh Abdullah and many members of the Assembly were arrested in 1953. A puppet assembly was made to pass a constitution that a puppet government wanted and none knows it better than Sheikh Abdullah’s grandson. The assembly that Omar Abdullah calls most empowered was not even able to implement its autonomy resolution. Omar Abdullah himself told his voters that he was fighting the election only for local Muncipal issues and had no illusions about being asked to play a role in the solution of the Kashmir problem. Thus even a doctored constitution passed by a puppet assembly has now been abrogated. Kashmir is back to square one as a disputed territory between India which calls it its Union territory, Pakistan which demands a plebiscite but now there is a third party China which claims that it has spent $65 billion in Gilgit and so has a vested interest in it and of course since 1962 it has also claimed Ladakh and so refuses to have anything other than a LAC there. Thus we now have three parties in 2020 while there were only two in 1947. Nobody mentions the fourth party i.e the people of Jammu, Kashmir Doda and Ladakh the four territories that Frederic Drew identified in his book Jammu And Kashmir Territories .