New status of J&K and Ladakh to benefit people: Kovind

Addressing the nation on the eve of Independence Day, President Ram Nath Kovind expressed confidence that the government’s decision to revoke the special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir and divide it into two Union Territories will enable the people there to access and enjoy the same rights, same privileges and same facilities as their fellow citizens in the rest of the country.

He felt that privileges available to other states like the progressive, egalitarian laws and provisions related to the Right to Education, accessing public information through the Right to Information, reservations in education and employment and other facilities for traditionally deprived communities and justice for daughters by abolishing unequal practices such as instant triple talaq will be applicable to the new Union Territories too.

The President gave a background to the decisions taken by flagging that the generation that led India to freedom did not perceive "independence only in terms of transfer of political power".

“They considered it a stepping stone in a longer and larger process of nation-building and national welding. Their objective was to improve the life of each individual, each family and of society as a whole,” he said.

Kovind mentioned that India has rarely been a judgemental society, it has had an easy-going, live-and-let-live principle.

“We respect each other’s identity – whether born of region, language or faith, or even the absence of faith. India’s history and destiny, India’s legacy and future are a function of coexistence and conciliation, of reform and reconciliation – of expanding our hearts and embracing the ideas of others,” he said.

Recounting his far and wide travel across the country, Kovind said, “Indians can be very different in their tastes and habits, but Indians share the same dreams.”

Dwelling on how state and society, government and citizen, must see each other and must cooperate with each other, Kovind noted nation-building, at the end of the day, is about creating that optimal partnership between voters and their representatives, between citizens and their government, and between civil society and state.

You can catch his full address to the nation here.