On Thursday, Bar and Bench reported that Youth 4 Panun Kashmir, a group that represents Hindus in Kashmir, filed an intervention application (IA) with the Supreme Court in favour of the Central government’s plan in 2019 to abolish Article 370 of the Constitution.
The group requested the Supreme Court to reject all applications filed with the lower court against the Central government’s decision to repeal Article 370, which had conferred special status to the former State of Jammu and Kashmir.
The complaint claimed that Article 370 and 35A “were the biggest reason for the lack of psychological integration of the erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir with the rest of India and became a breeding ground for separatist ideas leading to the ethnic cleansing of innocent Kashmiri Pandits.”
Lawyer Siddharth Praveen Acharya filed the petition, which sought the Supreme Court to investigate the atrocities perpetrated against Kashmiri Pandits and the inactivity of the Central and State governments.
The group said that since Article 370 was revoked, there has been an upsurge in “targeted killings of Hindus” in Jammu and Kashmir.
According to the petitioner, Article 370 violated the rights of Kashmiri Pandits since they risked losing their permanent residence advantages if they married outside the State.
In addition, the petition noted that several clauses of the Indian Penal Code do not appear in the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC), which is in effect in Jammu and Kashmir.
The petitioner further said, Citing the Supreme Court’s ruling that homosexual intercourse is no longer illegal,
The former Jammu and Kashmir state was not happy with the Supreme Court’s decision since the Indian Penal Code did not apply to them.
The RPC also claimed responsibility for facilitating the training of large numbers of people in the use of guns via the use of mass exercises.
The petitioner further argued that doing away with Article 370 was within constitutional bounds and entirely legal. The group argued that the petitions contesting this action should be thrown out.
The Supreme Court’s Constitution Bench is scheduled to begin hearing petitions contesting the repeal of Article 370 on August 2. The case will be heard on a daily basis, with the exception of Mondays and Fridays, as determined by the Court.
Almost four years after Article 370 of the Constitution was repealed, this occurred.
The Central government’s decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution, which resulted in the loss of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, has been challenged in over twenty cases filed with the Supreme Court. Two new Union Territories were created out of the old state.
Some petitioners had asked for a referral to a full seven-judge Constitution Bench when the cases were last listed in March 2020, but the five-judge bench ultimately chose not to do so.
Petitioners claimed inconsistency between two five-judge bench Supreme Court decisions on the interpretation of Article 370 (Prem Nath Kaul v. State of Jammu & Kashmir and Sampat Prakash v. State of Jammu & Kashmir).
There was no dispute between the two judgements, but the five-judge bench considering the case decided not to send it to a bigger bench.
In the meanwhile, the Union Home Ministry has submitted a new affidavit in which it claims that the state of Jammu and Kashmir has seen unparalleled stability and growth since the repeal of Article 370, with incidents like stone pelting and the closure of schools becoming a thing of the past.
However, the Supreme Court has already stated that the same does not apply to the constitutional problems at hand.
