SC may set up bench to hear A370 pleas in July
The Supreme Court may constitute a five-judge bench in July to take up a clutch of petitions related to the abrogation of Article 370, thereby withdrawing the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, the reorganising of the erstwhile state into two Union Territories, and on the subsequent delimitation exercise in the region to earmark constituencies for future elections. Some of these have been pending before the court since August, 2019.
On Monday, Chief Justice of India NV Ramana agreed to consider listing the cases in July after the summer vacation before an appropriate bench. The top court will reopen on July 11 after the vacation, which starts on May 23.
The matter was mentioned by senior advocate Shekhar Naphade, who sought listing of the case citing the ongoing delimitation exercise in J&K.
The CJI responded that he will
try to list the case. “This is before a five-judge bench. Give details…we will list it. There are some issues with judges and bench composition,” added justice Ramana.
At this, Naphade, appearing for petitioners that included retired Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak and former member of the Union home ministry’s Group of Interlocutors for J&K, Radha Kumar, requested that the matter be listed on reopening of the
court after the summer break.
“Let me see…after vacation. I will have to reconstitute the bench etc,” replied the CJI.
Around two dozen petitions are pending before the top court challenging the Union government’s August 2019 decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution.
In 2019, the batch of petitions was referred to a constitution bench, comprising justices Ramana, Sanjay Kishan Kaul, R Subminister hash Reddy, B R Gavai and Surya Kant.
In March 2020, the five-judge bench rejected a preliminary plea by some of the petitioners to refer the matter to a seven-judge bench in view of alleged contradiction in two previous judgments of the five-judge benches in dealing with the interpretation of Article 370.
The March 2020 order held there is no conflict between the two previous judgments and that the petitions could be decided by a five-judge bench. The petitions have not been listed after March 2, 2020.
The petitions challenged the constitutional validity of the J&K Reorganisation Act, 2019 and the August 5, 2019 Presidential Orders nullifying Article 370 that gave special status to J&K. The petitioners include Delhibased advocate ML Sharma, J&k-based lawyer Shakir Shabir, National Conference Lok Sabha MPS Mohammad Akbar Lone and Justice (Retd) Hasnain Masoodi, former bureaucrat-turnedpolitician Shah Faesal.