Policies/Regulation

A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Monday unanimously upheld the power of the President to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution, which in August 2019 led to the reorganisation of the State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) into two Union Territories and denuded it of its special privileges. It reasoned that Article 370 was only a ‘temporary provision’ to ease the accession of the then princely State to the Union at a time of internal strife and war.

In the lead judgment, Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud, writing for himself, Justices B.R. Gavai and Surya Kant, pointed out that J&K had divested itself of “any element of sovereignty” after the execution of the Instrument of Accession to the Union in October 1947. Justices Sanjay Kaul and Sanjiv Khanna concurred in their separate opinions. The special privileges of J&K as well as a separate Constitution were held to be a mere feature of ‘asymmetric federalism’ and not sovereignty.