Business Recorder Editorial December 11, 2018

The G-B conundrum

A seven-member larger bench of the Supreme Court (SC), headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar, is hearing a set of petitions challenging the Gilgit-Baltistan Order 2018 and the Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self Governance Order 2009. In addition, the petitions seek the right of the citizens of the area to have genuine representation. On a previous hearing on December 3, 2018, the SC had ordered the government to furnish it the recommendations of a high level committee charged with examining constitutional, administrative and governance reforms for Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B). At the hearing on December 7, 2018, the SC ordered the setting up of a new committee to consider the previous committee’s proposals and recommendations. Headed by Attorney General (AG) Anwar Mansoor, the new committee includes Aitzaz Ahsan as amicus curiae, G-B Bar Council vice chairman Javed Ahmed, petitioner’s counsel Salman Akram Raja, the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and G-B’s secretary Chaudhry Afrasiab and G-B Law Minister Aurangzeb Khan. The court asked the AG to share the proposals of the previous high-level committee with the members of the new one and also asked the G-B representatives for their proposals and observations. While this process of revisiting the proposals of the previous committee and garnering the views of G-B representatives plays out, the SC postponed the next hearing till December 24. The petition/s being adjudicated seek to declare the Statutory Regulatory Order (SRO) Number 786 (1) of September 9, 2009 and the Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self Governance Order 2009 (promulgated by the PPP government), amended in February 2015 to allow the Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas (KANA) to act as the G-B Governor as illegal and contrary to the May 1999 SC judgement in the Aljihad Trust case.

The Northern Areas, now G-B, were left in a legal, constitutional and political limbo following partition and independence in 1947 due to the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India. Whilst India declared Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) as part of the Indian Union after the Raja of Kashmir’s accession to India amidst the conflict in the state, albeit with special constitutional arrangements, on our side Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) was given a formal status as an entity that was not part of Pakistan but tied to it in numerous ways. The Northern Areas were left out in the cold in these arrangements, informed as they were by the Kashmir dispute having landed in the UN Security Council with a promised plebiscite to determine the will of the people of Kashmir entire whether they would choose to be part of Pakistan or India. That plebiscite never took place, and the 1948 war in Kashmir and subsequent wars between Pakistan and India in 1965 and 1971 froze the Kashmiri divide along the Line of Control (LoC), minor adjustments because of these wars notwithstanding. Whereas AJK at least had a modicum of a state structure and institutions functioning, the Northern Areas remained in a state of hibernation, largely ruled from Islamabad. The people of G-B’s desire for citizens’ rights and proper representation is therefore understandable but the status of the area remains hostage to a settlement of the Kashmir dispute. It is a reflection of the seeming ‘permanence’ of the ground situation that the denizens of G-B have been clamouring for long to be either made part of Pakistan and accorded provincial status, or at least bestowed rights and representation. The former demand is considered difficult since it would weaken Pakistan’s case in the Kashmir dispute that the UN Security Council mandated exercise of the right of self-determination be carried out. Therefore the next best thing being considered in the case before the SC is to accord as many of the rights of citizens and representation to the people of G-B as they would have if they were a province of Pakistan, without being formally declared a province in the interests of Pakistan’s Kashmir case. While these sensitivities will likely determine the SC’s final verdict, it can be stated unqualifiedly that no minister of the federal government can by any stretch of the imagination be allowed to act as Governor G-B in future as this is wholly in violation of constitutional and democratic norms.