The Supreme Court (SC,) on the 22nd of February, asked the Indian States to stop boycotting and attacking Kashmiri students, in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack.
The urgent hearing regarding the issue took place after Tariq Adeeb, a Supreme Court advocate, filed a petition against the States boycotting Kashmiri students.
In his petition, Tariq said, the Indian educational institutions are attacking and boycotting Kashmiri students, especially those belonging to the Kashmir Valley.
The petitioner asked the State Governments to “take steps to prevent threat, assaults, violent attack, social boycott, ostracism, eviction and other coercive acts by groups and mobs against Kashmiri and other minorities, particularly in the wake of terrorist attack of February 14 where a large number of CRPF personnel were killed.”
The bench of Judges, comprising of Ranjan Gogoi, the Chief Justice of India (CJI,) and Justice Sanjiv Khanna, reviewed the matter and directed 10 States to take action against such assaults.
The 10 states include Uttarakhand, Punjab, Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Meghalaya, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal.
The two judge bench said, “The chief secretaries, the DGPs and the Delhi Police Commissioner are directed to take prompt and necessary action to prevent incidents of threat, assault, a social boycott against Kashmiris and other minorities.”
However, K.K. Venugopal, the Attorney General who represented the Central Government, denied the allegations and said, the Centre already took the required measures. He said, the nodal officers were appointed and the helpline numbers are already in place to prevent the stated violence.
Mr. Venugopal further said, the Centre had already appointed nodal officers, on the 15th of June 2018, as the Kashmiri students were vulnerable. This happened months before the Pulwama terror attack, which took place on the 14th of February.
The next hearing for the case is scheduled on the 6th of March.
Stay tuned for further updates.
