The Supreme Court has reserved judgment on a number of petitions, including two brought by the National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party, which questioned the legality of the Centre's 2019 decisions to revoke J&K's nearly 70-year-old special status under Article 370 and split the state into two Union territories.
The courtroom debate over the issue, which commenced on August 2, lasted 16 days over a 35-day period.
After the J&K Constituent Assembly was dissolved in 1957, it was impossible to change Article 370, according to the challengers to the Centre's decision, who spent ten and a half days outlining their arguments.
A five-judge Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai and Surya Kant ordered the conclusion of arguments on scrapping Article 370 and bifurcating J&K into two UTs after hearing rejoinders from petitioners’ counsel Kapil Sibal, Gopal Subramaniam, Rajeev Dhawan, Zaffar Mohd Shah and Dushyant Dave.
The Centre and supporters of the decision in many intervenors through attorney general R Venkataramani, solicitor general Tushar Mehta, senior advocates Harish Salve, Rakesh Dwivedi, V Giri, Mahesh Jethmalani and Guru Krishna Kumar and others took just five and a half days to elaborate the validly exercised power to skeletonise Article 370 to make J&K’s integration with India complete and its bifurcation to preserve territorial integrity.
In response to a question from the bench, the Union government informed the court that it was prepared to hold assembly elections for J&K UT and provided details on how the process would begin by first installing people's representatives at the democratic institutions at the local level.