Downsizing Kashmir Live Blog with all the Elements with Key Events

On the morning of August 5, locals in Jammu and Kashmir woke up to a communications blackout and a curfew. While they were asleep, signal bars on mobile phones vanished and the internet was turned off.In a first in recent years, landlines too were severed. India's northernmost state, it seemed, had travelled back in time. Thousands of paramilitary personnel, most of whom had been flown in on giant IAF C-17 heavy-lift aircraft in several waves over the past few days, fanned out into the streets to enforce the curfew.Ten days before the 72nd anniversary of India's midnight 'Tryst with Destiny', the stage was being set for another tectonic shift: the 'dilution' of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution and the bifurcation of J&K to create two Union territories-Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.The passage of the J&K Reorganisation Bill by Parliament on August 6 means India now has 28 states and nine Union territories. It is the first time a state in the country has been turned into a Union territory.

Article 370 was a 'temporary provision' included in the Constitution on October 17, 1949. It exempted J&K from the Indian Constitution and permitted the state to draft its own constitution. Its dilution has done away with all of the erstwhile state's special powers, including that of the state legislature to draft its own laws on all subjects other than communications, defence and foreign affairs. Gone also are J&K's own constitution, flag and penal code. The air had been thick with speculation over the preceding days. On August 4, the Amarnath Yatra was abruptly called off and pilgrims and tourists told to leave the Valley. The trigger was said to be the discovery of a terrorist plot to attack the pilgrimage. Journalists were shown a US-made sniper rifle, an IED and hand grenades as evidence of malevolent intent. Firing resumed along the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan, with the Indian Army using 155 mm Bofors howitzers-among the rare instances of the use of this heavy calibre along the LoC since the 1999 Kargil war. There was also an encounter, with the army claiming that five men of the Pakistan Border Action Team, or BAT, had been shot dead in the Keran sector. They wanted Pakistan to take the bodies back.