[Live Updates From Supreme Court] Article 370 Hearing- Day 3

The relationship between J&K and India under Art. 370 was to remain till the enactment of Consti of J&K. Therefore, it was supposed to be a temporary provision.

J. Kaul - What do you mean ?

DD - Prem Nath Kaul states that it is temporary. Sampat Prakash doesn’t.

This reference cannot be decided by a Five Judges Bench as there is conflict between two Five Judge Benches

AIR 1959 SC 749 AND AIR 1070SC 1118

Sr. Adv. Rajeev Dhawan - This can be considered at a later point, post the rest of the arguments.

J. Ramana - The lawyers had to decide this amongst themselves.

Senior Advocate Dinesh Dwivedi is arguing now on why the matter should be referred to a larger bench.

Conditions of Art. 370(3) had to be satisfied in order to cease the operation of the Article.

SBI v. Santosh Gupta which was based on Sampat Prakash case (1968). In the SBI case, SC had held that Art. 370 was not temporary.

The difference between Damnoo and the current case exists in the fact that in the former, the interpretative changes involved the replacement of the Sadar-i-Riyasat by the Governor as SIR is a defunct post. But, the Centre has used these supposedly minor interpretative changes to completely change the relations between the Centre and the State.

In the current case, the Parliament had made interpretative changes to Art. 367 in order to make changes to Art. 370. Damnoo judgement shows that this cannot be done.

Bench assembled

Senior Advocate Raju Ramachandran resumes his submissions