Core issues being examined in 370 case

A five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court was set to deliver a verdict on Monday on whether the August 2019 decision of the Union government to scrap Article 370 and bifurcate Jammu & Kashmir into two Union territories was valid.

- Utkarsh Anand

Following a marathon hearing spanning 16 days, the five-judge bench of Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, Bhushan R Gavai and Surya Kant had on September 5 reserved its verdict.

HT reported on Friday that there are likely to be two judgments, according to people aware of the matter. These judgments may or may not be divided.

The hearing in the case had commenced on August 2 after a hiatus of over three years, with its last listing dating back to March 2020 when another five-judge bench had declined to refer the matter to a larger bench. The reference was sought on the grounds that two previous judgments of the apex court were conflicting with each other, but the bench did not agree with this contention.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal spearheaded the legal submissions on behalf of the petitioners in the case, followed by a strong line up of other senior counsel, including Gopal Subramanian, Rajeev Dhavan, Dushyant Dave, Zafar Shah, CU Singh and Gopal Sankaranarayanan.

A look at the core issues deliberated upon during the hearings.

370 a permanent feature?

The final leg of the proceedings in the matter witnessed extensive arguments and discussions with the petitioners buttressing on the permanent nature of Article 370 and thus, the special status of J&K. The Centre and other respondents emphasised that the provision was always meant to be temporary and that its abrogation was the ultimate step towards complete integration of J&K with the Union of India.