Petitions challenging abrogation of Article 370 will be listed after Dussehra

The Supreme Court on Friday has said that the petitions which challenge the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, conferring special status to Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), will be listed soon after the upcoming Dussehra vacation.

The matter was mentioned before the bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) UU Lalit.

CJI agreed to list the matter for a serious hearing post the Dussehra break.

The Court is closing for Dussehra break on October 3 for a week. It will reopen on October 10.

There are about 20 or more petitions, which have been pending before the top court that challenged the decision of the Central government of August 5, 2019 to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution.

After the abrogation, the Centre had revoked the special status, earlier granted to the state of Jammu & Kashmir. Subsequently, the state was bifurcated into two Union Territories- the Union Territory of Ladakh and the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir.

In March 2020, a 5-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court had held that there seems no need for petitions which challenge the abrogation to be placed before a bench of 7 judge Constitution bench.

This ruling came soon after a few like-minded petitioners sought reference of the case to a 7-judge bench stating that there has been a conflict between two judgments of the Supreme Court namely Prem Nath Kaul vs State of Jammu and Kashmir and Sampat Prakash vs State of Jammu and Kashmir. Both these judgments were rendered by 5-judge benches and dealt with the interpretation of Article 370.

The petitioner although requested for the 7-judge bench, the then bench which was hearing the case, simply declined to refer the matter to a larger bench, holding that there was no conflict between the two judgments and there was no need.