India's government, led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, imposed a security lockdown and communications blackout in Muslim-majority Kashmir to avoid a violent reaction to the Aug. 5 decision to downgrade the region's autonomy. At the court's preliminary hearing Wednesday, Chief Justice Ranjan Gogi and two other judges rejected the government's opposition to a notice - a written response from the government setting out its stand on the issue - because it might be cited by Pakistan at the United Nations.
Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal said he and another law officer were present in court and there was no need for the notice. "We know what to do, we have passed the order, we are not going to change," the Press Trust of India news agency quoted the judges as saying. "How the court decides these cases will have a deep bearing on the destiny of democracy in India," Suhrith Parthasarathy, a Chennai-based lawyer, said in an article for the Hindu newspaper.
The court also ordered the union government to submit a response within seven days to a plea by Anuradha Bhasin, the editor of the daily Kashmir Times, who has sought a relaxation of a government ban on telephone and internet services in occupied Kashmir since Aug. 5. The Supreme Court also allowed Sitaram Yechury, head of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), to visit Kashmir to meet his colleague, Mohammed Yousuf Tarigami, a former lawmaker who is among hundreds of political workers and activists that the government has detained since the crackdown began. Yechury was turned back from Srinagar airport when he tried to visit his colleague on Aug. 9.
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