The Supreme Court firmly stated that there is no question of a "referendum" relating to Jammu and Kashmir joining or applying the entire Constitution through the annulment of Article 370 to end the state's 70 -year special status and its division into two Union Territories on August 5, 2019.
Leader of the J&K National Conference Mohd Akbar Lone made an attempt to use a "referendum" to support his claim that the will of the J&K populace was not taken into account before neutering Article 370, which had gained permanent status following the dissolution of the J&K Constituent Assembly (CA) in 1957.
Lone’s counsel Kapil Sibal read out the speech given in the J&K CA by then chief minister Sheikh Abdullah. “The constitution of the Indian Union, therefore, clearly envisaged the convening of a Constituent Assembly for the J&K state, which would be, finally competent to determine the ultimate position of the state in respect of the sphere of its accession which would be incorporated as permanent provision of the Constitution," Sibal said quoting Abdullah.
While other states were quasi-federal in nature, Sibal claimed that J&K was truly federal because it had residual powers with the state assembly and also enjoyed a special status even under the Indian Constitution. Sibal made reference to repeated references in the J&K CA debates to the "will of people of J&K" in determining the state's relations with respect to India.
When he moved to draw an analogy with the Brexit referendum on UK's exit from the European Union, a bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai and Surya Kant could brook no more arguments on linking of the Kashmir issue to a referendum and said, “In our established constitutional democracy, any recourse to the will of the people has to be expressed and sought in terms of established institutions.”