India Top Court Sets Date to Hear Jammu and Kashmir Autonomy Cases

Shruti Mahajan
·1 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- India’s top court will begin hearing a clutch of petitions from August 2 challenging the legality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration’s move to end the special constitutional status of the Himalayan province of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019.

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A five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court, headed by the chief justice D.Y. Chandrachud will hear the case.

The petitions have been on hold since 2020, when a different five-judge bench had refused to refer the issue of Kashmir’s autonomy to a larger bench.

The Modi administration abrogated Article 370 of the Indian constitution, effectively ending a large degree of local autonomy for the troubled Himalayan region, soon after the prime minister won a second term in office. At the time, the government defended the move, a long-held campaign promise of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, as a move to ensure better governance and improve economic opportunities.

The government told the court in a fresh affidavit Monday, the move brought “unprecedented era of peace” in the region.

The series of legislative and executive orders passed to scrap the special status of India’s only Muslim-majority state and to bifurcate it into two federally-governed territories are being challenged in the Supreme Court by rights activists and organizations.

The complete security lockdown in the region and information blackout — the administration restricted movement of people, cut telephone lines, curbed internet connectivity and arrested local political leaders — was also challenged before the country’s top court and in January 2020 it ruled that an indefinite shutdown was not permissible and was an abuse of power.

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