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NEW DELHI: Congress leaders led by Priyanka Gandhi were detained here on Friday as they observed August 5 to mark the “death of democracy” in India. Staying subdued about the annexation of disputed Jammu and Kashmir on this day in 2019, which the party opposed, and the stone-laying ceremony for the proposed temple at the site of the razed Babri Masjid later, to which it offered mixed response, the Congress focused instead on inflation, unfair trade taxes and authoritarian measures used to crush the protests. Anybody who raised people’s issues and stood up against the “onset of dictatorship is viciously attacked and put in jail”, Rahul Gandhi said. The issue also forced adjournments in both houses of parliament as Congress members registered their protest. Wearing black clothes to protest against inflation and unemployment, Congress leaders hit the streets and were engaged in dramatic stand-offs with the police personnel outside the Parliament complex and the All India Congres

THE measures unleashed by Narendra Modi’s BJP government on Aug 5 are designed to go beyond the wreck of Kashmiri autonomy. They are aimed at destroying the territory itself. The legal mechanics, crippling as they are, were imposed after the Valley was ‘sanitised’ by the army and paramilitary. Kashmir’s police were disarmed. Its civil service was abolished and all forms of communications cut. This itself is a tribute to the rebellious spirit of the people of Kashmir. Three legal measures were put in place. The hollowed-out Article 370, guarantee of Kashmiri autonomy, was repealed — except for one provision. Thereafter, the Jammu & Kashmir Reorganising Act, 2019, was enacted. It separates Ladakh and makes it a union territory. Muslim Kargil was joined to Buddhist Leh. Kashmir and Jammu were joined together to form a ‘union territory’, directly ruled from New Delhi through an ‘administrator’ called ‘lieutenant governor’. It will have no control over police or public order. It