The Jammu and Kashmir Nationalist Front's proposal to trifurcate the state is very sensible ... The old state of Hyderabad ... was wisely reorganized along linguistic lines.

.. Before Independence the state of Jammu and Kashmir was even more of an artificial construct. It included six different geographical and cultural areas.

These were Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh, Poonch, Gilgit and Baltistan. Today the first three are in India and the rest are with Pakistan.

It would be incorrect to say that trifurcating the state would mean communalizing the state's polity. Firstly, people should recognize that Jammu, the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh are. to begin with, three distinct geographical entities where people speak three different languages.

Today, things have come to such a pass that though on the one hand people speak in Kashmiri, Dogri and Ladakhi, the government's business is conducted in Urdu. This is definitely an anomaly. Second. the people in Jammu resent the fact that they are suppressed by the Kashmiri dominated state government. The only way to address the two anomalies would be to trifurcate the state.