Dialogue Earth asked North Carolina Congressman Agha Syed Rufullah Mehdi about his party’s environmental record in government. Political turmoil and conflict in Jammu and Kashmir has put “normal governance” in the region on the back burner, he said.
Mehdi said he recognizes that this “mistake” is “unfortunate,” causes significant environmental damage, and that North Carolina can no longer afford to ignore it.
The PDP, which was in power from 2015 to 2018, had a more detailed manifesto that focused primarily on protecting forests, planting trees, promoting electric vehicles, and restoring wetlands.
However, when Dialogue Earth inquired about the implementation of these pledges, there were few concrete provisions. Senior PDP leader Naeem Akhtar told us: Policies will come later. ”
When asked about the period when the party was in power and the fact that little was done on environmental issues, Akhtar said: “It was a very turbulent time… Don’t expect anything from us. I couldn’t do it,” he said. He echoed Mr Mehdi’s views and acknowledged that the environment was being “hugely neglected”.
Notably, during its tenure in power, the PDP had a coalition alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has led the coalition government that has ruled India since 2014. The People’s Party was also the main political party in charge of Indian policy. The state of Jammu and Kashmir was under the direct rule of New Delhi (2018-2024).
On the other hand, all political parties place emphasis on the growth of tourism. This is despite the fact that many resorts are currently struggling to cope with the environmental impact of increased tourism.
Conflicting views on the power of the new government
There are also conflicting views about how much power Jammu and Kashmir’s political parties actually have and whether their manifestos matter.
Dialogue Earth spoke to Mohamed Ashraf Mir, former head of the region’s Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs.
He said that before the 2019 constitutional amendment, issues such as forests, animal and bird protection, electricity, population control and family planning were on the agenda of the state legislature. These residual powers were exercised under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, which made it different from other Indian states.
Although the constitutional amendment removed this power from state legislatures, Mr. Mir had previously stated that “if a (state law) is in any way inconsistent with a law enacted by the (Indian) Parliament, the provisions of Article 2 An Act of Parliament would have prevailed.” Article 254 of the Constitution. ”
Nadeem Qadri, Jammu and Kashmir’s prominent environmental lawyer, disagrees with Mir on how responsible the state was for pre-2019 environmental laws. He said most state environmental laws are simply adaptations of laws passed at the national level.
“Only the nomenclature (of the laws) has changed… all laws were ordered and controlled from the central legislature,” Qadri said, adding that Jammu and Kashmir’s newly elected government “has changed the central laws. It cannot be amended,” he added. Instead, they can create policies related to the environment, climate, wildlife, and even ecotourism. “For the past 15 years, there has been no policy on environment and climate change. At least we should now.”
However, Qadri said even these policies would require the approval of the Lieutenant Governor before implementation and the central government would still have control over such policies.
Kashmiri activists take to court
Similar environmental and constitutional concerns are growing in neighboring Ladakh. Some Ladakh activists led a rally in New Delhi in October, demanding statehood and inclusion of Ladakh in the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.
The organization currently grants significant autonomy to the tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Mizoram. It aims to preserve the cultural and social characteristics of sparsely populated mountain areas.
Asked whether such a request could be made in Jammu and Kashmir, most locals and experts Dialogue Earth spoke to wanted to go off the record. Given the history of violence in the Kashmir Valley, it is unlikely that the Indian state would respond well to similar action.
Instead, activists are turning to the courts because they have little faith in the legislative process for dealing with environmental issues.
Raja Muzaffar Bhat, an environmental activist from Kashmir, said, “In the past four years, I have filed around six petitions on illegal riverbed mining, solid waste management, wetland restoration, etc., before the National Green Tribunal (India). “We submitted the matter to the highest environmental court,” he said. . To him, this seems to be the only path to positively addressing Kashmir’s many environmental problems.
Syed Shahryar, an independent journalist based in Srinagar, contributed to this report.
This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under a Creative Commons license.