Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Shah Faesal’s decision on Tuesday to withdraw his petition from the Supreme Court that challenged the presidential order to abrogate Article 370 has to be seen as a significant development in the politics of J&K and for him personally. Life in a way has come full circle for 39-year-old Faesal, who became the first Kashmiri to top the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination in 2010. Nine years into service he took that inconceivable step of becoming political, forming his own party – the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement (JKPM). He had earlier resigned from the civil service. Like many of his ilk, he may have joined the civil service with the idealistic hope of making a difference, being the change, but with the passage of time, many believe the time–tested administrative ecosystem that exists, might have left him frustrated enough to take that risky plunge into politics. A little over three years ago, he criticised the Centre for scrapping Article 370, which granted special status to J&K for a limited period. He was not the only one; there were 22 others who mounted legal challenges to the Centre’s move to abrogate some of the provisions of the Article. In hindsight many would say that he was singled out for “punishment”, but the fact is that he was seen as an individual who had violated civil service norms in the first instance, and in the second instance, was seen to be emerging as a potential internal security threat like other local politicians in the months after the article’s abrogation, so much so that he had to be detained like them on charges of advocating “soft separatism” through his social media posts and articles. Cut to the present, the apex court is yet to rule on his decision to withdraw the petition, but he has been allowed to re-join the IAS as Deputy Secretary in the Union Ministry of Culture. As he says, he has started his life again with a “clean slate”, but if viewed in the larger context, the petition’s withdrawal suggests that the UT administration and the Centre must be doing something right to bring Kashmiris together. The overall aim is one nation, one flag, and one Constitution, in short, unity in diversity.