The Azad Jammu and Kashmir Supreme Court has observed that any amendment in the region’s constitution was “not a concession to be wrested” from the government, as the court issued its advice on a presidential reference, which emerged on Sunday.
The advisory opinion came in response to a reference filed by acting AJK President Chaudhry Latif Akbar under Article 46-A of the Interim Constitution Act, 1974 after the recently proscribed Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) demanded the abolition of 12 refugee seats in the legislative assembly ahead of the July 27 elections.
The 12 seats are reserved for refugees from Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, who settled in mainland Pakistan after 1947. JAAC alleges that these seats were often used by mainstream Pakistani political parties to influence the formation of governments in Muzaffarabad.
The presidential reference had sought answers to five key questions over the constitutional status of the refugee seats, the legislature’s competence to introduce a fundamental constitutional amendment at the present stage, the constitutional limits of the rights of assembly and association, and the state’s obligation to protect the electoral process and reject extra-constitutional demands.
In the advisory opinion, dated June 6, AJK SC Chief Justice Raja Saeed Akram Khan held that the constitution of the AJK was the “supreme law” of the state and its provisions the “property of the people of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and of the whole Kashmiri people”.
“The amendment of the constitution is a solemn constitutional act, not a concession to be wrested from a government under duress,” the opinion declared.
“It can only be accomplished through the process the constitution itself prescribes, by an assembly possessed of the full democratic mandate of the people, after deliberation, consultation, and consensus-building,” the advisory opinion read. The court stated that the advisory opinion was being tendered after “full consideration of the constitutional provisions, the legislative and historical background of the refugee seats, the factual matrix placed before this court, and the submissions of the advocate general and the learned amicus curiae”.
The court observed that the AJK government remained legally obligated to hold elections within the time stipulated by the constitution. It maintained that the constitution was not a “document to be honoured when convenient and discarded when inconvenient”.
“The constitution endures because its guardians, ie, the government, the legislature, the judiciary, and ultimately the people, stand firm in its defence.”
The court’s opinion came a day after the region’s government proscribed the JAAC, days before the group is scheduled to stage a protest on June 9. The JAAC’s latest protest call centred around the highly contentious demand to abolish the 12 refugee seats in the region’s Legislative Assembly.