SC to consider listing of pleas challenging abrogation of Article 370 giving special status to Jammu and Kashmir

The Supreme Court on Friday said it will take a decision on early listing of petitions challenging the Centres decision to abrogate provisions of Article 370 which had given special status to Jammu and KashmirA bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices P S Narasimha and J B Pardiwala took note of the submissions of senior advocate Raju Ramchandran appearing for one of the parties that the pleas needed an urgent hearingAll right I will take a call on it the CJI saidOn December 14 last year also the pleas for urgent listing were mentioned before the bench by Radha Kumar an academic and author who had intervened in pending petitionsEarlier on April 25 and September 23 last year a bench headed by the then CJI N V Ramana since retired had agreed to list for hearing the pleas challenging the Centres decision to abrogate provisions of Article 370The apex court will have to reconstitute a fivejudge bench to hear the pleas as exCJI Ramana and Justice R Subhash Reddy who were part of the fivejudge bench which had heard the pleas have retiredAlso Read Maharashtra political crisis SC refuses to refer pleas to larger bench for reconsideration of 2016 Nabam Rebia orderBesides the two former judges Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul B R Gavai and Surya Kant were part of the bench which on March 2 2020 had declined to refer to a larger sevenjudge bench the batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Centres decision to abrogate provisions of Article 370 on August 5 2019Several petitions challenging the Centres decision to abrogate provisions of Article 370 and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019 which split JK into two Union Territories Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh were referred to a Constitution Bench headed by Justice Ramana in 2019 by the then CJI Ranjan GogoiBy abrogating Article 370 the Central government had revoked the special status of Jammu and KashmirNGO Peoples Union of Civil Liberties PUCL Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association and an intervenor had sought referring of the matter to a larger bench on grounds that two judgements of the apex court Prem Nath Kaul versus Jammu and Kashmir in 1959 and Sampat Prakash versus Jammu and Kashmir in 1970 which dealt with the issue of Article 370 conflicted each other and therefore the current bench of five judges could not hear the issueDisagreeing with the petitioners the bench had said it was of the opinion that there is no conflict between the judgementsThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever