New Delhi: 05 August: The Supreme Court will hear on August 8 an application seeking directions to the Union Government to restore the statehood of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan mentioned the matter before Chief Justice of India BR Gavai and said that it is shown as listed on August 8. He requested that the matter not be deleted from the list of that day. CJI accepted the request.
Incidentally, today, August 5, is the sixth anniversary of the abrogation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370.
The application has been filed as a Miscellaneous Application in the disposed of matter “In Re : Article 370 of the Constitution” in which the Supreme Court upheld the abrogation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.
In that judgment, the Court did not address the issue of the constitutionality of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act 2019, which converted J&K into a Union Territory, in view of the assurance given by the Solicitor General that the Statehood will be restored. The Court merely directed, “Restoration of statehood shall take place at the earliest and as soon as possible”, without setting any timeline.
The applicants, college teacher Zahoor Ahmed Bhat and activist Khurshaid Ahmad Malik, stated that despite the assurance given by the Solicitor General that J&K’s statehood will be restored, the Union has not taken any steps in that regard in the last eleven months after the judgment in the Article 370 case.
The Non-restoration of J&K’s statehood violates the basic feature of federalism, contended the applicants. “The non-restoration of the status of Statehood of Jammu and Kashmir in a time-bound manner violates the idea of federalism which forms a part of the basic structure of the Constitution of India,” they said.
The applicants said that the Assembly elections were held peacefully and it shows that there is no impediment in restoring statehood. “Therefore, there is no impediment of security concerns, violence or any other disturbances which would hinder or prevent the grant/restoration of the status of Statehood to Jammu and Kashmir as had been assured by the Union of India in the present proceedings,” the application stated.
The petition has been filed by AoR Soayib Qureshi
