Security personnel patrol during a lockdown in Srinagar on August 10, 2019 (AFP)

NEW DELHI: Challenging the validity of the Centre’s move on scrapping of special status to J&K under Article 370 and bifurcation of the state into two Union Territories under the J&K (Reorganisation) Act, National Conference on Saturday approached the Supreme Court and pleaded it to declare them unconstitutional.

In a petition, two MPs of NC, Mohd Akbar Lone and Hasnain Masoodi, contended that the valuable rights of the state and its residents were taken away without following the “procedure established by law and in a manner that violates every canon of Constitutional morality”. The MPs raised 37 grounds to challenge the decisions and pleaded the SC to examine whether the Centre could “unilaterally unravel this unique federal scheme under the cover of President rule in the state while undermining crucial elements of due process and rule of law”.

The petitioners contended that Clause (3) of Article 370 provided that any change to the relationship between J&K and the central government could only be brought on the recommendation of the Constituent Assembly and pleaded the apex court to declare the Presidential order as “unconstitutional, void and inoperative”.

“Having been passed during an extended period of President’s rule, the Presidential order substitutes the concurrence of the Governor for that of the Government and effectively, therefore, amounts to the Central government taking its own consent (under President’s rule) to change the very character of a federal unit. In other words, the Presidential order takes cover of a temporary situation, meant to hold the field until the return of the elected government, to accomplish a fundamentally, permanently, and irreversibly alteration of the status of the state without the concurrence, consultation or recommendation of the people of that State, acting through their elected representatives,” the petition said.

“It is respectfully submitted this court has repeatedly held that federal republican democracy is a basic feature of the Constitution... It is respect-fully submitted that the right to autonomous self government and to one’s identity within a federal framework are essential fundamental rights and that these valuable rights have been taken away without the procedure established by law,” the petition said.

