Srinagar: The Supreme Court has granted Government of India four weeks time to file response to a plea, challenging the validity of Article 370 of the Constitution of India which grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir.
The petitioner, Kumari Vijayalakshmi Jha, has challenged the April 11 order of the Delhi High Court rejecting her plea saying nothing survives in it as the apex court has already dismissed a similar prayer on the issue.
The Registry of the apex court passed the order after advocates Shalinder Saini and B. V. Balaram Das appeared on behalf of the centre. So far, no one from state appeared before the court in connection with the plea—Special Leave Petition–filed by Jha.
In her petition, Jha claimed that the Delhi High Court had dismissed her plea by “wrongly following and misreading” the earlier judgement of the apex court.
She contended in the high court that Article 370 was a temporary provision that had lapsed with the dissolution of the state’s Constituent Assembly in 1957.
The petition had claimed that the continuance of Article 370 even after the dissolution of the state’s Constituent Assembly and the J-K Constitution never getting the assent of the President of India or Parliament or Government of India, amounted to “fraud on the basic structure of our Constitution”.
In July 2014, the Supreme Court had dismissed Jha’s plea challenging the special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir and had asked here to move the high court.
In Sampat Prakash v. the State of Jammu & Kashmir(1969), the Supreme Court held that the Article 370 will cease to operate under sub-clause (3) only when a recommendation is made by the Constituent Assembly of the State to that effect.
ADVERTISEMENT
