The Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission ceased to exist from _________.

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (1), 31st October 2019. That date is the 'appointed day' fixed under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, the day on which the State of Jammu and Kashmir ceased to exist and was reorganised into the two Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, which has a legislature, and Ladakh, which does not. The date was chosen for its symbolism: 31 October is the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who as the first Home Minister brought the princely states into the Indian Union, and it is observed as Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, National Unity Day. The Act itself had a swift passage — it was passed by the Rajya Sabha on 5 August 2019 and by the Lok Sabha on 6 August 2019, and received the President's assent on 9 August 2019 — but its substantive provisions were brought into force only from the appointed day nearly three months later. Why the State Human Rights Commission went with it follows from the way a statutory body exists. The Commission was not a constitutional body; it had been constituted under the State's own human-rights legislation, and a statutory body has exactly the life its parent statute gives it. The Reorganisation Act repealed a long list of the former State's laws — 153 State enactments and Governor's Acts in all — and when the statute under which a commission was constituted stands repealed, the commission ceases to exist with it. That is what happened on 31 October 2019, and the same fate overtook several of the former State's other statutory oversight bodies, whose restoration human-rights organisations have since urged. Complaints of human rights violations from the territory now go to the National Human Rights Commission, which is constituted under the central Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 and whose jurisdiction extends across the country. The lesson to carry beyond this particular question is the distinction between a constitutional body and a statutory one. A constitutional body — the Election Commission, the Comptroller and Auditor-General, the Union Public Service Commission, the Finance Commission — owes its existence to the Constitution and can be abolished only by amending it. A statutory body owes its existence to an ordinary law, and can be created, altered or extinguished by the legislature that made that law, which is precisely why the reorganisation of a State can sweep away a commission of this kind at a stroke.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) 15 August 2019 is a plausible-looking date because it falls only days after the parliamentary action of 5 and 6 August and the President's assent on 9 August, and because Independence Day gives it a resonance the examiner can exploit. But an Act does not necessarily take effect when it receives assent. The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act defined an 'appointed day' to be notified by the Central Government, and it was that day — 31 October 2019 — on which the State ceased to exist, the two Union territories came into being and the repeal of the State's laws took effect. The gap of nearly three months was needed for the administrative work of dividing the assets, the services and the institutions of a State between two new Union territories. The distinction between the date of assent and the date of commencement is worth carrying generally, since examiners use it for many statutes.  (c) 31 December 2019 has no significance in this story at all; it is offered because a candidate who remembers only that the change happened late in 2019 may reach for the end of the calendar year. It is worth using the option to fix the sequence of dates properly, because the whole episode is examined by date. On 5 August 2019 the President issued the constitutional order superseding the earlier order of 1954, and a resolution recommending that the provisions of Article 370 cease to be operative was moved in Parliament, the Reorganisation Bill being passed by the Rajya Sabha the same day and by the Lok Sabha the next. The President assented to the Act on 9 August 2019. The appointed day on which the reorganisation actually took effect was 31 October 2019. Those four dates, in that order, answer nearly every question this subject produces.  (d) 1 January 2020 is later still and belongs to nothing in this sequence. The reorganisation was complete two months before it, and by that date the two Union territories had already been functioning with their Lieutenant Governors for two months. Options of this kind — a round date shortly after the true one — are included to catch a candidate who has the year right and the month wrong, and they are best defeated by attaching each date to a reason rather than remembering it as a bare number. Here the reason is memorable: the appointed day was fixed for the birth anniversary of Sardar Patel, observed as National Unity Day, and the choice of that date was itself part of the political message of the reorganisation. A date with a reason attached is far harder to dislodge than a date learnt alone.

Concept: The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 was passed by the Rajya Sabha on 5 August 2019 and the Lok Sabha on 6 August 2019 and received the President's assent on 9 August 2019, and it took effect on the appointed day, 31 October 2019. On that day the State of Jammu and Kashmir ceased to exist and two Union territories came into being — Jammu and Kashmir, with a Legislative Assembly, and Ladakh, without one — each administered by a Lieutenant Governor. The Act abolished the State's Legislative Council, repealed 153 State laws and Governor's Acts, and extended a large body of central legislation to the new territories; the State's own Constitution ceased to operate. Statutory bodies constituted under the repealed State laws, among them the State Human Rights Commission, ceased to exist with the statutes that had created them, and the corresponding central institutions now operate in the territory: human rights complaints, for example, lie to the National Human Rights Commission constituted under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993. The reorganisation followed the presidential order of 5 August 2019 and the parliamentary resolution by which the special provisions of Article 370 ceased to be operative, and the Supreme Court upheld that action in December 2023. Reorganisation of States is a familiar constitutional exercise: Article 3 empowers Parliament by law to form a new State, alter the area or boundaries of an existing one or change its name, on the President's recommendation and after the views of the State legislature have been obtained, and such a law is expressly not treated as an amendment of the Constitution under Article 368.

State PCS 2021 Q80 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2021 Q80 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer