Abrogation of Article 370: Supreme Court reserves orders on whether issue should be referred to larger Bench

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.

.Abrogation of Article 370: Live updates from the Supreme Court [Day 5]. 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.

.Challenge to abrogation of Article 370: Live Updates from the hearing in Supreme Court. The hearing continued the following day on December 11, last year, before the Court closed for the winter break.

.Land Acquisition Act matters: Live Updates from Supreme Court [Day 2]. Following this, hearing resumed earlier this week on Monday, and continued yesterday.

.Abrogation of Article 370: Live updates from the Supreme Court [Day 3]. 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.

.Abrogation of Article 370: Live updates from the Supreme Court [Day 4]. The Presidential Order of August 5, 2019 paved the way for the removal of Article 370 last year. On August 5, 2019 the Constitution (Application to Jammu & Kashmir) Order, 2019 , was introduced to supersede the Constitution (Application to Jammu & Kashmir) Order, 1954 . The 1954 Order had listed out provisions of the Constitution of India that would not apply to Jammu and Kashmir.

. In its place, the 2019 Order provided that all provisions of the Constitution of India will apply to the state of Jammu & Kashmir, with a few exceptions and modifications.

. Though the power to abrogate or modify Article 370 was conferred on the President under clause (3) of the Article, there was a pre-condition to the same – concurrence by the Constituent Assembly of the State of Jammu & Kashmir. The Constituent Assembly had, however, ceased to exist as far back as in the 1950s.

. In order to get over this hurdle, the Presidential Order now under challenge had amended Article 367 to replace the reference to “Constituent Assembly” under Article 370(3) to mean “Legislative Assembly”.

. Subsequently, the President had issued another order on August 6, 2019 making Article 370 redundant .

Abrogation of Article 370: Supreme Court reserves orders on whether issue should be referred to larger Bench

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