NEW DELHI: After a long hiatus, the Supreme Court is likely to hear the case challenging the constitutionality of the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution which granted special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir after the Dussehra break.
Pursuant to taking note of the submissions of a counsel that the abrogation of the said article was an important constitutional issue a bench led by CJI UU Lalit on Friday said, “We’ll certainly list that. All mentioning slips come before me. We’ll certainly do that.”
In wake of the amendments, many petitions were filed before the Supreme Court, praying that the Presidential Orders issued under Article 370, repealing the special status of the Jammu and Kashmir, and the J&K (Reorganisation) Act, 2019, be declared as unconstitutional. One of the pleas averred that it was “striking at the heart of the principles on which the State of J&K had integrated”.
The hearing commenced on December 10, 2019 - four months after the repeal of the J&K special status - before a Constitution Bench comprising Justices N V Ramana (now retired), SK Kaul, R Subhash Reddy, B R Gavai and Surya Kant.
During the course of hearings that took place before the Constitution Bench, some of the petitioners sought for the reference of the matter to a 7-judge Bench in light of the contrasting opinions expressed by two coordinate benches of the Supreme Court in the cases of Prem Nath Kaul and Sampath Prakash.
Vide a judgement dated March 2, 2020, the Constitution Bench held that there was no need to refer the matter regarding the challenging to the Presidential Orders issued under Article 370 to a larger Bench.
Since 2nd March 2020, there have been no signs of the listing of the pleas on Article 370. From the last week of March, the Supreme Court went into a virtual lockdown, in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, and only urgent matters were being taken up via video-conferencing.
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