Supreme Court on Friday said that it would list petitions seeking to revoke the special status conferred to Jammu and Kashmir as per Article 370 after the Dussehra vacations.

“We will certainly list that” the chief justice of India UU Lalit stated in response to an urgent request to Senior Advocate Prashantho Sen about the need to list the cases.

It may be noted that in 2019, the petitions were sent to the Constitution bench consisting of justices N V Ramana, Sanjay Kishan Kaul, R Subhash Reddy, B R Gavai and Surya Kant. Justice Subhash Reddy, one of the judges on the bench, resigned in January of this year. The CJI probably was referring to this fact when he said that he’ll need to reconstitute his bench.

The hearings in Article 370 cases commenced before the bench of five judges in December of 2019, nearly 4 months after the announcements sent through the Centre in August 2019.

An initial issue was raised in the case of the necessity of referring to the 7-judge bench was required due to the alleged divergence between the opinions of two courts from the Supreme Court in the cases of Prem Nath Kaul and Sampath Prakash.

With a decision dated 2nd March 2020 the Constitution Bench held that there was no reason to refer the case concerning the contest to the Presidential orders issued pursuant to Article 370 to a larger bench.

The petitions are not published since March 2, 2020.