Human rights has become 'global buzzword' after revocation of Article 370: Sitharaman

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir denied women from the state inheritance rights and this was a "serious human rights violation" that no one spoke about but human rights has become a "global buzzword" following the revocation of the temporary constitutional provision.

She said that Article 370 denied fundamental rights to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

Delivering a lecture on the 'Indian Economy: Challenges and Prospects' organised by the Deepak and Neera Raj Center on Indian Economic Policies at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, she was asked about the economic loss in Jammu and Kashmir following the lockdown put in place after Article 370 was revoked.

"So, a temporary Article 370, which till now denied women of the state their inheritance, which denied the Scheduled Castes of the state a constitutional right for affirmative action, which denied every tribal what positive and affirmative action gave them of the Indian Constitution is now, after the removal of Article 370, which is a temporary article, going to enable us to provide all that to everybody," Sitharaman said amid a round of applause from the audience at Columbia University on Tuesday.

"Denying a woman inheritance from her father, for instance, just because she married somebody else from somewhere outside of her state was also a serious human rights violation, about which none of us spoke till now. Remove Article 370 (and) human rights becomes a global buzzword? Where were we when women have been all these years denied property rights, where were we when Scheduled Castes were denied affirmative action."
Sitharaman asserted that except probably for the first week after the removal of Article 370, "I don't understand what is meant by lockdown. There was nothing imposed. There was never a protest for which a firing or a shootout should happen, nothing of that happened later."
"Like never before, the entire product, if anything, has been purchased by private or the public entrepreneurs. Apple in this season is the biggest economy for Jammu and Kahmir," she said
"How, in fact, payments have been given for people who were stone pelters. Stone pelters majority of the time were school going fellows. Money was paid to them. So on the internet, we have to take measures, just so that it doesn't really lead to amplification of rumour mongering and so on."
She said the economy, newspapers and "everything were doing their routine business. Of course, there was a lot of monitoring by the security forces because we didn't want anything going wrong, people being hit or convoys being hit."