In Re: Article 370 of the Constitution
Background
Article 370 of the Constitution had given Jammu & Kashmir a special, semi-autonomous status since independence. In 2019, while the State was under President's Rule (its Legislative Assembly having been dissolved), the President issued two Constitutional Orders: one applying the entire Constitution of India to the State and modifying how "Constituent Assembly" was read in Article 370, and another declaring that all of Article 370 would cease to operate. On the same day, Parliament, acting in place of the dissolved State Legislature, passed the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, splitting the State into two Union Territories (Jammu & Kashmir, and Ladakh). Numerous petitioners challenged all of this as unconstitutional, arguing that Jammu & Kashmir had never fully surrendered its sovereignty, that Article 370 could only be altered through its own specific procedure (which required the now-dissolved State Constituent Assembly's involvement), and that turning an entire State into Union Territories without its consent violated India's federal structure.
Decision Breakdown
The Court held that Jammu & Kashmir retained no residual "internal sovereignty" once it acceded to India: Article 370 was always meant as a temporary, transitional arrangement to ease that State's full integration, not a permanent guarantee of separate status. It held that the President's power under Article 370(3) to declare the article inoperative survived the 1957 dissolution of the State's own Constituent Assembly, because that dissolution only ended the Assembly's own role in the process, not the President's power. The Court found one specific technical move invalid in isolation, using the interpretation clause of Article 367 to indirectly amend Article 370 itself, but held it did not matter because the President could achieve and had achieved the same result validly through his separate, direct power under Article 370(1)(d). It also upheld that Parliament, standing in for the State Legislature during President's Rule, could validly give its "views" on the Reorganisation Bill and that the President could impose President's Rule and dissolve the Assembly under Article 356 in these circumstances. The Court accepted the government's assurance that Jammu & Kashmir's statehood would eventually be restored and directed the Election Commission to hold Assembly elections by 30 September 2024. In his separate opinion, Justice Kaul added an unusual coda recommending that the government set up an impartial truth-and-reconciliation commission to investigate decades of human rights violations by both state and non-state actors in the Kashmir Valley.
Lesson Learnt
A constitutional provision described as "temporary" or "transitional" can be brought to an end through the very mechanism written into it, even if the specific body originally meant to trigger that mechanism (here, the State's own Constituent Assembly) no longer exists, as long as the power itself was vested in an office, like the President, that continues to exist.