What does the special status given to Jammu and Kashmir under Articles 370 mean?
Solution
The Constitution of India vide Article 1 (1) declares that ‘India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States’. In Article 1(2), it states that ‘the states and the territories thereof shall be as specified in the First Schedule’. The First Schedule, as amended from time to time, contains a list of 26 states and 6 union territories. Jammu and Kashmir is included in the First Schedule as one of the states. The territory of Jammu and Kashmir is stated to be ‘the territory which immediately before the commencement of this constitution was comprised in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir.
Thus, the state of Jammu and Kashmir being an integral part of the Union of India comprises only that territory which was left in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir on 25th January 1950 and not that part which has been occupied by Pakistan.
