Solicitor General Tushar Mehta on Wednesday apprised the Supreme Court that the Union Government has no intention to interfere with the special provisions applicable to North Eastern states or other parts of India.
Pursuant to such an assurance, the Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud disposed of an interlocutory application (IA) filed by an Arunachal Pradesh politician. Mr. Mehta made this statement following the apprehensions raised by advocate Manish Tewari about the implications of the abrogation on the prospects of States in the northeast.
The petitioners have concluded their arguments. The Bench is set to hear submissions on behalf of the Union government from Thursday.
The Supreme Court on August 22 termed as “unacceptable” the submission that Article 370 of the Constitution ceased to operate once the term of the constituent assembly of Jammu and Kashmir ended in 1957 after drafting the State’s Constitution.
The remark by a five-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud came when senior advocate Dinesh Dwivedi, appearing for intervenor Prem Shankar Jha, argued that nothing of Article 370, which accorded special status to the erstwhile State, survived once the Constitution of J&K was enacted on January 26, 1957, and the term of the State’s constituent Assembly ended.
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On August 5, 2019, the Centre decided to strip the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir of special status and bifurcate it into two Union Territories. By abrogating Article 370, the Central Government revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. Several petitions challenging the abrogation of the provisions of Article 370 and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, were referred to a Constitution Bench in 2019.
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