The Supreme Court on Wednesday raised the question whether the President’s power to declare inoperative Article 370 of the Constitution, which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, will not continue to hold the field after the dissolution of the erstwhile State’s Constituent Assembly on January 26, 1957.
Clause (3) of Article 370 gave the President power to notify the Article “inoperative” or modify it. But a proviso had made it “necessary” that such a move would have to be recommended by the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Constituent Assembly.
“A Constituent Assembly is not a permanent body like the Parliament and the Supreme Court. No Constituent Assembly can have an indefinite life... The J&K Constituent Assembly was constituted for a specific purpose — to draft the Constitution of J&K. It became functus officio once the J&K Constitution was framed… This proviso making the Constituent Assembly’s ‘recommendation’ necessary before abrogation has no application. If the proviso ceased to operate, surely the substantive part of Clause 3 in Article 370 will remain,” Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, heading a Constitution Bench, observed orally on the first day of hearing.
