New Delhi: The Supreme Court Wednesday agreed to list the petitions challenging the Centre’s decision of 2019, which struck off the special status of Jammu and Kashmir by abrogation of Article 370 of the constitution.
The matter was mentioned before a Bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justice P S Narasimha, which said that it would examine and give a date.
Earlier in September, the then Chief Justice of India U U Lalit had said that the petitions would be ‘certainly’ listed after the Dussehra breaks.
However, the same could not be listed then.
The petitions were referred to a Constitution Bench in 2019, which comprised Justice N V Ramana, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Justice R Subhash Reddy, Justice B R Gavai and Justice Surya Kant.
One of the members of this Bench, Justice Reddy, retired in January this year. The hearings on cases related to Article 370 commenced before the five-Judge Bench in December 2019, almost four months after the notification was issued by the Centre on August 5, 2019.
The case raised the question as to whether a reference to 7-judge bench was necessary in light of alleged divergence in the opinions expressed by two coordinate Benches of the Supreme Court in the cases of Prem Nath Kaul and Sampath Prakash.
The Constitution Bench decided on March 2, 2020, that there was no need to refer the matter challenging the Presidential Orders issued under Article 370 to a larger Bench.
The petitions have not been listed since.