The Supreme Court of India on Tuesday, while hearing the Article 370 case, asked the Centre to indicate if there is a time frame to restore the statehood for Jammu and Kashmir. During the hearing, SG Tushar Mehta has been asked to come back with instructions on this after the lunch break.
“Does clause (a) contemplate a situation where the entire territory of a state can be turned into a UT? So wherever you read State, you read UT. Let’s read clause (1) in that light.” the top court asked as quoted by LiveLaw.
SG Mehta argued, “Article 370(1) permits prime minister and chief minister of state can make a change, alteration, choose not to apply any provision and like 35A create a constitutional provision only for J-K… like this discretion is now used to ensure that such a thing can never happen again”, Bar and Bench reported.
“I will show that that is not of permanent nature and we want this to become a state again… I will submit the Article 370,” he added.
On Monday, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said that Article 35A of the Indian Constitution which was scrapped in 2019, ‘took away fundamental rights’. The CJI made the comments during the hearing of the petition challenging the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.
A Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, and Surya Kant for the eleventh day on Monday, continued hearing petitions challenging the Centre’s decision to repeal the special status of Jammu and Kashmir by diluting Article 370 and Article 35A.
In 2019, Union Home Minister Amit Shah proposed that Article 370 and Article 35A be scrapped. The then President Ram Nath Kovind issued an order, the Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 2019, stating that the provisions of the Indian Constitution will henceforth be applicable to Jammu and Kashmir, which according to experts brought the northern state ‘at par’ with other states of India.