The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its order on reference of the case to seven judge bench in a the batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Centre’s decision abrogating provisions of Article 370 and bifurcating the state into two Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
The order was reserved by a five-judge Constitution bench is presided by Justice N V Ramana and comprises Justices S K Kaul, R Subhash Reddy, B R Gavai and Surya Kant.
The submissions were made senior advocates Sanjay Parikh, Gopal Sankaranayan, Dinesh Dwivedi, Rajeev Dhawan, for the petitioners while Attorney General KK Venugopal and Solicitor General represented the Centre who said that there is no need for such a reference.
The current hearings were limited to the aspect of referral of the case to the larger bench.
A batch of petitions had been filed in the matter including that of private individuals, lawyers, activists and political parties like National Conference, Sajjad Lone-led J&K Peoples Conference and CPI (M) leader Mohd Yousuf Tarigami.
The petition on behalf of NC was filed by Lok Sabha MPs Mohammad Akbar Lone and Justice (retd) Hasnain Masoodi. In 2015, Justice (retd) Masoodi had ruled that Article 370 was a permanent feature of the Constitution.
A plea was also filed by a group of former defence officers and bureaucrats -- professor Radha Kumar, ex-member of Home Ministry's Group of Interlocutors for J&K (2010-11), former J&K cadre IAS officer Hindal Haidar Tyabji, Air Vice Marshal (retd) Kapil Kak, Major Gen. (retd) Ashok Kumar Mehta, ex-Punjab-cadre IAS officer Amitabha Pande and ex-Kerala-cadre IAS officer Gopal Pillai.
The Centre on 5 August had scrapped the provision of Article 370 of the Constitution that granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir. Jammu and Kashmir now stands bifurcated into two union territories i.e. J&K with a legislative assembly and Ladakh without one.
