New Delhi: Defending its decision to dilute Article 370 and to do away with the Special Status of Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre said it “brought an unprecedented development, progress, security, and stability to the region, which was often missing during the old Article 370 regime”.The Union government on Monday, July 10, filed a fresh affidavit in the Supreme Court, just a day before it is set to hear a batch of 23 petitions challenging the reading down of Article 370. The last hearing on the matter was held in March 2020. The petitions challenge the Presidential Order of August 5-6, 2019, and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019.The affidavit noted that schools, colleges, universities and other public institutions have been functioning without any disturbances or strikes for the last three years following the dilution of Article 370. “The earlier practice of daily hartals, strikes, stone pelting and bandhs are a thing of the past now,” the Centre’s affidavit said, according to Livelaw.Life has returned to normalcy after three decades of turmoil in the region, the affidavit said. “For the first time, after independence, the residents of the region are enjoying the same rights which the residents of other parts of the country are enjoying. This has resulted into bringing the people of the region into the mainstream and thereby inevitably frustrating the sinister design of secessionist and anti-national forces,” it added.Stating that efforts have been made towards “strengthening democracy at the grassroot level, the Centre said that for the first time in history, an elected three-tier Panchayati Raj System has been established in Jammu and Kashmir. In November-December 2020 elections for the members of the District Development Councils were held, the affidavit highlighted.The affidavit has sought to underline that the security situation in the region has improved significantly in the last three years. Between 2018 and 2022, the Centre said ‘law and order events’ reduced by 97.2% and ‘terrorist initiated instances’ reduced by 45.2%.The Centre has also conveyed that tourism has significantly improved in the region, referring to the G-20 Tourism Working Group held in Srinagar in May. “For the first time, after independence, the residents of the region are enjoying the same rights which the residents of other parts of the country are enjoying. This has resulted into bringing the people of the region into the mainstream and thereby inevitably frustrating the sinister design of secessionist and anti-national forces,” it added.However, political parties and civil society groups in the region have been vehemently criticising the reading down of Article 370. The people of Kashmir too paint a starkly contrasting picture to that of the Union government. For them, silence, fear, repression, rising prices, and unemployment have taken over the region in the last three years.The petitioners too hold a view that the changes in August 2019 by the Government of India were “unilateral”, and did not have the “consent of the people of [J&K]”.Though the Modi government said it acted the way it did in order to “fully integrate” Jammu and Kashmir with the rest of India, J&K is the only region in the country where people are governed not by elected representatives but by an administration that reports to the Union home ministry. This has been the situation for five years now. The erstwhile state’s assembly was dissolved and Governor’s Rule was imposed in June 2018.Political parties in the region have welcomed the decision of the apex court to hear the matter after it went into limbo for over three years. “If the Supreme Court carefully assesses the actions of August 5, 2019, I have no doubt that it will conclude that the Modi Govt engaged in blatant subversion of Constitutional provisions, unlawfully disempowered the people of J&K, and dealt a blow to Indian democracy,” Salman Soz of the Congress had said.