SC to hear pleas challenging Centre's will to abrogate Article 370. What are the issues?

The Supreme Court of India is ready to hear a set of approximately 23 petitions that challenge the decision of the Center to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution. The Article had granted a special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Headed by CJI D.Y Chandrachud, a five-judge bench is going to hear the pleas. The Supreme Court's decision to hear these pleas comes 4 years after the state of Jammu and Kashmir (erstwhile) was reconstituted into the two UTs of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh in the year 2019. The hearing will be held on July 11, 2023.

Issues involved

The Presidential Orders of August 5-6, 2019, and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act 2019 have been challenged. 

The August 5 order titled Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 2019 was passed under Article 370(1)(d) of the Indian Constitution, thereby superseding the Presidential Order of 1954 that brought forward Article 35A, which made the state of Jammu and Kashmir capable of defining who all are permanent residents, as well as forming special laws for them.

The website of the Supreme Court issued a notice that the bench is going to consider multiple pleas filed by many, one of them being filed by IAS officer Shah Faesal.

IAS Shah Faesal and his plea

IAS Shah Faesal is the very first Kashmiri to top the All-India Civil Services Examination, from the batch of 2010. The officer was detained for around more than a year after the abrogation of Article 370.

The officer thus resigned from his position and set up the Jammu and Kashmir People's Movement (JKPM), a political body, in January 2019.

Even after the officer resigned, the government did not accept the resignation. Instead, the government assigned the minister, who is a doctor by profession, to the Union Culture Ministry.

In the year 2019, the Centre decided to remove the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and further divide it into two Union Territories.

In the very same year, a Constitution bench was assigned to manage multiple petitions that challenged the decision of the Centre to revoke Article 370 and also implement the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act of 2019.

The hearing in 2020

It was on March 2, 2020, when the petitions challenging the decision of the Central government of August 2019 came up in the apex court. At this time, Justice NV Ramana's presided five-judge bench rejected the prayer to refer the pleas to a larger Bench. The court clarified that its order is actually restricted to the limited preliminary issue of if the issue should be referred to a Bench which is larger. It also clarified that the order has not considered any issue based on the merits of the dispute.

Justices R Subhash Reddy, Sanjay Kishan Kau; Surya Kant, and B R  Gavai were the other members on the Bench. Last year in January, Justice Reddy got retired. Justice Ramana too retired last year in August as the Chief Justice of India.

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