Srinagar- The Supreme Court on Tuesday will take up a batch of petitions challenging the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status by the BJP-led government over three years ago.
The five-Judge Constitution Bench comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai and Surya Kant will take care of the preliminaries on Tuesday and issue procedural directions about filing of documents and written submissions.
The bench will also issue a date of hearing of the petitions.
The court is expected to examine whether parliament could have scrapped Article 370 without the consent of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and whether its bifurcation into two Union territories was constitutional.
On Monday, the Centre filed an additional affidavit where it said the move to scrap Article 370 in August 2019 has led to an “unprecedented era of peace” in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
“Jammu and Kashmir was facing the brunt of terrorism for the last three decades. To curb it, the only way was to remove Article 370,” the Union Home Ministry said in the affidavit.
“Today, all necessary institutions including schools, colleges, industries are running normally in the Valley. Industrial development is happening and people who lived in fear are living peacefully,” the affidavit read.
The case was last heard by a different five-judge bench in March 2020. In that hearing, the bench had refused to refer the matter to a larger, seven-judge bench.
On August 5, 2019, the Centre decided to strip the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir of special status and bifurcate it into two Union Territories.
Several petitions challenging the Centre’s decision to abrogate the provisions of Article 370 and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, which split J&K into two Union Territories Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh were referred to a constitution bench in 2019.
By abrogating Article 370, the Central government had revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.
People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), a prominent NGO, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association, and an intervenor had earlier sought that the matter be referred to a larger bench on grounds that two judgements of the apex court — Prem Nath Kaul versus Jammu and Kashmir in 1959 and Sampat Prakash versus Jammu and Kashmir in 1970 — which dealt with the issue of Article 370 conflicted with each other and therefore, the current bench of five judges could not hear the issue.
Disagreeing with the petitioners, the top court had ruled in 2020 it was of the opinion that “there is no conflict between the judgements” and the issue will be heard by the five-judge bench.
Faesal, who had floated his political party, the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement (JKPM), had filed the petition in the top court in 2019.
In April 2022, the government had accepted Faesal’s application for withdrawing his resignation from service and reinstated him.
Faesal had in April last year filed an application seeking deletion of his name from the list of seven petitioners who have challenged the scrapping of Article 370 of the Constitution.
Other petitioners in the matter are Javid Ahmad Bhat, Shehla Rashid Shora, Ilyas Laway, Saif Ali Khan and Rohit Sharma and Mohammad Hussain Padder.
Advocate-on-Record Aakarsh Kamra, who has filed the plea on behalf of Faesal and others, said besides the IAS officer, Rashid has also filed an application seeking deletion of her name from the list of petitioners. (With agency inputs)
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