A five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court today reserved its orders on whether the batch of pleas challenging the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution should be referred to a larger Bench of the Court.
Orders were reserved today by a Constitution Bench of Justices NV Ramana, SK Kaul, R Subhash Reddy, BR Gavai and Surya Kant.
On the fifth day of arguments today, Senior Advocates ZA Shah, Rajeev Dhavan, Chander Uday Singh, Gopal Sankaranarayanan, Dinesh Dwivedi and Sanjay Parikh made submissions for the petitioners.
On the respondents' side, Attorney General KK Venugopal and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta made arguments.
The hearing was initially scheduled to be heard on November 14, 2019. However, the Bench deferred the hearing, opining that it required one common compilation of all the documents of both sides to ensure that the hearing becomes easier.
The first day of arguments in the case therefore took place on December 10, last year.
The hearing continued the following day on December 11, last year, before the Court closed for the winter break.
Following this, hearing resumed earlier this week on Monday, and continued yesterday.
Today marked the final hearing on the limited aspect of whether the case should be referred to a larger Bench of the Supreme Court.
Appearing for Government authorities, AG Venugopal and SG Tushar Mehta have argued that there is no requirement for such a reference.
Whereas Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for one of the petitioners, supported the stance that there was no need for reference to a larger Bench, he made it clear today that he does not agree with the government as far as the reasoning adopted or the interpretation of case laws cited is concerned. Today, Senior Advocate Chander Uday Singh also opined that the case need not be referred to a larger Bench.
To read more on yesterday's hearing, click the link below.
