Supreme Court focus on Article 370 in August

A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India is slated to commence hearing on Wednesday the batch of petitions challenging the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution. .What is noteworthy is that the Bench comprises the five senior-most judges of the top court - Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai and Surya Kant.This Bench will devote all Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays to the case..When one speaks of the five senior-most judges of the Supreme Court of India, it is not merely the bench composition, but also the five courtrooms of the apex court that function under them.Now as the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court begins hearing the case dealing with Article 370 from tomorrow, are other cases likely to take a backseat?.Each court takes up roughly about 40 cases per day, apart from mentioning matters and urgent listings.A total of three days in each court would have seen disposal of roughly 600 cases, though currently, Tuesdays to Thursdays are slotted as regular hearing days, where final hearings are taken up.If the recent mentioning of matters before the first five judges is any indication, it would clearly emerge that the Article 370 case is at the top of the Supreme Court's priority.The Court is aiming to hear the same in a time-bound manner, resulting in a number of cases being pushed back to be heard after the completion of the Article 370 case. .One such case is the tussle between the Uddhav Thackeray and the Eknath Shinde factions of the Shiv Sena over the bow and arrow symbol. The case was mentioned on Tuesday by Advocate Amit Anand Tiwari, who represented former Maharashtra Chief Minister Thackeray.He sought early hearing of the case and also argued that the issue was already covered by the Constitution Bench judgment in the Maharashtra politics case.However, the Court said the matter would be taken up after the petitions concerning the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution are heard..This was not the only case in Court 1 which has to await the completion of hearing in the Article 370 case. The Court said that the petitions regarding the validity of the immunity to husband from marital rape “have to be decided”, and agreed to list the matter after hearing the Article 370 case.“The petitions of marital rape have to be decided... We can take it up after the Constitution Bench hearing on Article 370 gets over next month,” CJI told Senior Advocate Indira Jaising and Advocate Karuna Nundy..Another politically significant case is the plea by former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who is seeking interim bail to meet his wife on medical grounds.When the matter was heard on July 14, Justice Sanjiv Khanna, who was heading the bench, had said that the matter will have to be heard after the hearing in the Article 370 case starts, since the latter is likely to take up the whole of August. However, after Senior Advocate Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi insisted upon a hearing on interim relief of bail, the bench also comprising Justice Bela Trivedi agreed to hear the matter on July 28. However, it was not listed that day due to the unavailability of Justice Khanna..The court presided by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul was also willing to hear cases which are "short" so that hearings and consequential orders could be delivered.One of those cases which was pushed back was the Gujarat encounters case. The case is related to the Gujarat government’s objections to sharing a report filed by an apex court-appointed committee led by its former judge, Justice HS Bedi, who investigated several police encounters which happened during the term of current Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the State's Chief Minister.However, Justice Kaul clarified that it could only be heard after the Article 370 case. .The case related to larger questions surrounding reservation in promotions and the plea to debar those who are chargesheeted in serious offences from contesting elections have also been kept on the backburner. Both are pending before the bench of Justices Gavai and Surya Kant, and will be heard after the Article 370 hearing wraps up..If the ten-day hearing in the same-sex marriage case, which spanned over three weeks, is taken as an example, the Article 370 case is also expected to take over a month. As a result, most of the cases before the five senior-most judges slotted for final hearing or arguments can only be taken up in September, at the earliest. .While it is true that other cases would take a backseat, regular Constitution Bench hearings is what some would argue is the actual role of the top court: to hear matters involving Constitutional questions.The last decade saw the slowest disposal of Constitution Bench cases in the Court's history, with only 71 cases being disposed of between 2010-19.This trend continued during the first couple of years this decade and barring a few matters, hearings in matters of Constitutional significance had come to standstill due to the COVID-19 pandemic, before picking up again in 2022..Watch Live the Article 370 hearing in Supreme Court: