SC agrees to hear plea for time-bound statehood restoration in Jammu & Kashmir

Chennai: The Supreme Court was approached with an application on Thursday, seeking an early hearing of a plea that demands the restoration of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir within two months.

Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, representing the applicants, raised the matter before Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, requesting for an urgent listing. He emphasised that the restoration process needed to be time-bound, to which the CJI agreed to consider the request.

The application has been filed in the previously concluded “In Re: Article 370 of the Constitution” case, which was decided by a five-judge bench in December 2023. The ruling unanimously endorsed the Union government’s August 2019 decision to abrogate Article 370 that granted special status to Jammu & Kashmir.

The verdict by the bench led by CJI Chandrachud called the abrogation the “culmination of the process of integration” of the erstwhile state into the Union of India. It declared the abrogation to be a perfectly valid exercise of power by the President, ruling that Article 370 was always meant to be a temporary provision.

The judgment had further directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to conduct polls to the J&K legislative assembly by September 30, 2024, and asked the Centre to restore statehood to the region “as soon as possible”.

The top court, however, chose not to give a ruling on whether the reorganisation of the state of J&K into two Union territories of Ladakh and J&K was constitutionally permissible, pointing at the Centre’s statement that statehood of J&K would be restored eventually.

Referring to the Centre’s previous statements, application filed jointly by college teacher Zahoor Ahmed Bhat and activist Khurshaid Ahmad Malik argue that the delay in restoring statehood is at odds with assurances previously given by the central government and undermines India’s federal structure. The application highlights that, despite a peaceful assembly election process that was recently concluded, no substantial steps have been taken to restore the region’s former status.