Amit Shah to address parliament over Kashmir amid speculations of scrapping of Article 35A

Shah will give his statement in the Rajya Sabha at 11 am and the Lok Sabha at 12 pm.

After meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi separately, Shah was a part of the cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister's residence along with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

What is Article 35A?

Article 35A of the Indian Constitution allows the Jammu and Kashmir state's legislature to define “permanent residents” of the state and also provides special rights and privileges to those permanent residents.

Current situation in Kashmir

Tension prevailed in Jammu and Kashmir as the central government imposed  Section 144 of the CRPC in Srinagar with effect from August 5 and even with several top leaders in the Valley, including former Chief Ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, being put under house arrest since midnight.

The Jammu and Kashmir administration has ordered closure of all government and private schools in all districts of Jammu region while Section 144 has also been imposed in Jammu district and various examinations are cancelled.

"All private and government schools will remain closed tomorrow on August 5 as preventive measure till further orders," said orders issued by the Deputy Commissioners of different districts including Jammu, Kathua, Samba, Poonch, Doda, Rajouri, Udhampur and circulated on social media and official websites. 

Meanwhile, DC Jammu Sushma Chauhan also said that Section 144 has been imposed in Jammu district till further orders.

However, as many as 40 companies of CRPF have also been deployed in all districts of Jammu region, said an official. He said that as per order, in Jammu six companies, in Samba two, in Kathua two, in Udhampur four, in Reasi one, in Rajouri eight, in Poonch six and in Doda 11 companies of CRPF have been deployed.

Army has also been deployed in various parts of the district and the mobile internet has also be snapped.

Moreover, all examinations of different schools and University of Jammu have also been postponed till further orders and fresh dates will be announced later, said an order.

There is chaos and confusion among people as they are not aware of the reason behind an entire exercise of deploying 35,000 additional troops and issuing security advisory asking all Amarnath pilgrims to curtail their visit to the valley and return besides directing all non local students, labourers, tourists, employees to leave the Kashmir valley.

Post security advisory, three major pilgrimages including Machail Mata at Kishtwar, Buddha Amarnath in Poonch and Kouser Nag in Reasi were cancelled.

More than 500 students from NIT Srinagar also reached Jammu and left for their hometown by trains on Sunday.

The Indian Army foiled the Pakistan Army’s infiltration attempt on the intervening night of July 31-August 1 in Keran Sector of Jammu and Kashmir.

The Indian soldiers foiled the attempt by Pakistan's Border Action Team (BAT), inflicting heavy causalities on the infiltrating terrorists and BAT personnel.

The encounter left at least four killed while they were trying to infiltrate into India and strike a forward post in the Keran sector, sources told IBNS.

Intelligence sources earlier told IBNS that a Pakistan emboldened by the visit of Prime Minister Imran Khan to the United States, has reactivated its terror launch pads against India in the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) with plans to trigger something big in Kashmir.

"Terror launch pads in PoK, which were dismantled and pushed back to interior, have now been reactivated," sources told IBNS.

According to Indian sources, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar's brother Ibrahim Azhar had been relocated to PoK to oversee the affairs.