The noise on the contentious issue of the Article 35A has become louder in Jammu and Kashmir with Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Friday dispatching her four senior ministers to New Delhi to muster political and legal support for retaining the constitutional provision that empowers the state legislature to define its permanent residents.

Law Minister Abdul Haq Khan, Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu, Horticulture Minister Syed Basharat Bukhari and Information Minister Choudhary Zulfikar, flew to Delhi on the directions of Mehbooba.

The Supreme Court is currently hearing a petition seeking to scrap the Article 35A on the plea of its “discriminatory” nature against the womenfolk.

The hardline separatists in the valley have also jumped in to defend the provision.

However, the Kashmir centric parties have failed to generate public support in the Jammu and Ladakh regions for retaining the controversial Article even after invoking the Hindu ruler Maharaja Hari Singh who had introduced the “state subject” law in the state. Noises in support of the law were mostly being raised in the Kashmir valley although generally the women of Jammu had suffered because of the provision that was amended by an elected government.

A meeting of prominent residents of Jammu recently stressed that the Article 35A promotes alienation, deepens the ideology of separate identity and creates a wedge between J&K and rest of the country and as such it should be abrogated.

The BJP leadership that was earlier vocal against its alliance partner PDP’s stand of not tinkering with the Article 35A was now busy attacking the National Conference leader Omar Abdullah on the issue without making any reference to the PDP.

Mehbooba has cleverly chosen the ministerial delegation for meeting top BJP leaders and legal luminaries in support of her stand. Finance Minister Drabu was the architect of the agenda of alliance from the PDP side with the BJP general secretary Ram Madhav. She also included Zulfikar, a Muslim Gujjar of Rajouri, in the delegation to give an impression that the people of Jammu were also in favour of retention of the Article 35A.

Responding to Omar Abdullah’s recent statement that the separatists had no business to indulge in the controversy as they do not believe in the Indian Constitution, hardliner Syed Alishah Geelani said that Omar should understand that abrogation of the Article would change the demography of Jammu and Kashmir.

However, Geelani remains mum on the issue of Pakistan virtually gifting large areas of POK to China for building the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that has brought massive demographic changes there.