Part III
ExternalLatestAzad Kashmir's Constitutional Trap: Every Route Ends in Islamabad
Azad Kashmir's Constitutional Trap: Every Route Ends in Islamabad Wounds in the Federation - Part III On 5 June, Azad Kashmir’s government did three things in a single day. It announced legislative elections. It declared the territory’s largest civic movement a proscribed organisation under anti-terrorism law. And it switched off the internet. Two days later the Supreme Court directed citizens to the constitutional remedy: an Article 33 amendment through the Legislative Assembly. A United Nations report had already recorded what that 2018 “devolution” actually did. It did not transfer power to the Assembly. It transferred power to the Prime Minister of Pakistan. The election is still being held in phases under recurring blackouts. Amnesty International has stated that the communications shutdown is severely impeding independent verification of reported deaths. Pakistan’s own Human Rights Commission has asked for access rather than claiming to already know the facts. The material demands that began this confrontation — the price of flour and the price of electricity — are not settled by any provincial-style entitlement. They arrive, when they arrive, as discretionary federal grants. Because Azad Jammu and Kashmir is not a province. Every constitutional route the court named leads to the same place.
