The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hold the petitions claiming the scrapping of Article 370 to a larger bench. For now, the five-judge-Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, R Subhash Reddy, B R Gavai and Surya Kant headed by Justice N V Ramana will continue to hear the cases.
The top court refused to hold the petitions
According to the sources, the SC accepted the Centre’s arguments in the limited perspective of evidence and held that there is no conflict of opinion between two judgments — Prem Nath Kaul versus Jammu and Kashmir in 1959 and Sampat Prakash versus Jammu and Kashmir in 1970 — about the nature and extent of Article 370 and hence no larger bench is required.
Reaching for the Centre, Attorney General KK Venugopal had informed the top court bench; also holding that “the scrapping of terms of Article 370, has now become a ‘fact to be accepted’ giving an only option to accept the change”.
No conflict of opinion between two judgments
The two different judgments, ruling at first, the Sampat Prakash judgment, the Supreme Court had maintained that Article 370 will stop to be effective only if the President declares a charge to that effect on a proposal presented by the Constituent Assembly of Jammu & Kashmir.
Meanwhile, in Prem Nath Kaul verdict, the Supreme Court ordered that the complete powers of the ruler of Kashmir were not defined by Article 370. The temporary terms of Article 370, the court directed, were based on the theory that the ultimate relationship between India and Jammu & Kashmir would be finally decided by the Constituent Assembly of Jammu & Kashmir.
Till now 23 appeals have been registered in the top court against tearing Jammu and Kashmir of its special status and splitting it into two union territories – Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
Besides the appeals to the abrogation of Article 370, a turn of petitions was also registered in the court claiming the restrictions in the Kashmir valley. Therefore, the petitioners had debated over the fundamental right to speech violation and expression and the freedom to move loosely under Article 19 of the Constitution.
