Art 370 hearing from Tues: Spl bench on death row cases

A Five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Justice N V Ramana, the third senior-most judge in the Supreme Court, will start hearing from October 1 a bunch of petitions challenging abrogation of Article 370 as also Article 35A to remove the special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcation of the state into two Union Territories.

Article 370 and 35A were removed from the Constitution through a Presidential order on August 4 and a Bill was passed by Parliament subsequently as a follow-up to create separate Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Since Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi as also his No 2 judge Sharad Arvind Bobde are tied up with the daily hearing of the Ayodhya dispute, he constituted a separate Bench on Article 370 having four other judges as its members. They are Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, R Subhash Reddy, B R Gavai and Surya Kant.

The CJI reportedly cleared formation of the 5-judge Bench to hear Article 370 matters on Friday afternoon, but the constitution of this Bench is still not notified on the Supreme Court website. Its formation, however, became clear from a notice on the cause list for October 1 regarding a 3-judge Bench of Justices Ramana, Subhash Reddy and Gavai which will sit in Court No 3 on October 1. The notice reads: "If the Constitution Bench does not sit for any reason or hearing in

the matter listed before the Constitution Bench is over, the following matters will be taken up for hearing by this (3-judge) Bench." On August 28, the CJI had referred the petitions to the Constitution Bench, declaring that it will begin hearing the matter from the first week of October. In all ten petitions had been filed on Article 370, including six challenging the constitutionality of the Centre's actions. Also clubbed with them will be half a dozen other petitions filed later challenging withdrawal of the special status granted to the Jammu and Kashmir state. A special Bench of the CJI and Justices S A Bobde and abdul Nazeer had earlier issued notice to the Centre on the petitions, brushing aside objections of Attorney General K K Venugopal and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that such a notice would internationalise the issue and may be interpreted differently by other countries. Several petitions have been filed in the Apex Court, including pleas by the National Conference, Sajjad Lone-led Peoples Conference and several other individuals. Delhi advocate Manohar Lal Sharma, who is known for filing the PILs on every issue, is the first to petition to the top court and so the petitions will be capped with his name. These petitions have also challenged the bifurcation of the state into two Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. With four more judges taking oath on September 23 to let the Apex Court have the full strength of 34, the CJI decided to have the special benches from the next month to clear the backlog of the death row and taxation cases. In view of the growing number of cases jamming the top court, he had also made public on September 20 that single-judge benches will sit to hear appeals of bail and anticipatory bail in the cases related to offences entailing jail term up to seven years. According to the rules which were amended, the single judge would also hear the transfer petitions. BENCHES FOR DEATH ROW, TAX MATTERS: Besides the Constitution Bench, the CJI has also constituted a special 3-judge bench to hear matters related to the capital punishment and two other Benches of two judges each to conduct hearing on the tax matters. The special bench to deal with the death row cases was felt necessary since some 100 cases of the capital punishment have piled up in the Supreme Court. Some of the appeals are pending for the past one decade, compelling the CJI to give priority in dealing with them on an urgent basis. It was back in December that the CJI-led Bench had dismissed several frivolous PILs while he told an open court about 100 death reference cases were pending which need priority instead of such baseless PILs. The references are from various High Courts that have affirmed the death penalty awarded to the convicts by the sessions courts. Neither the dates of commencement of hearing by the death row Bench and the two Benches on taxation matters have been yet declared nor the judges named for these Benches but indications are that Justice Arun Mishra, who is No 4 in the ranking, may head the 3-judge Bench on the capital punishment.