NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court will on July 11 start hearing a bunch of petitions, the lead one by IAS officer Shah Faesal, challenging a nearly four-year-old constitutional amendment scrapping the special status of Jammu and Kashmir conferred through Article 370 and its bifurcation into two UTs.CJI D Y Chandrachud constituted the bench comprising himself and four most senior judges - Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai and Surya Kant - which on July 11 is most likely to fix the schedule for day-to-day hearing on these petitions challenging the August 5, 2019, decision.Except Justice Kaul, the other three will become CJI one after the other following Justice Chandrachud's retirement in November 2024.The five-judge bench will test the constitutional validity of the August 5 presidential order - the Constitution (Application to Jammu - Kashmir) Order, 2019 - superseding the Constitution (Application to J-K) Order, 1954, and the addition of Clause 4 to Article 367 making the Constitution applicable to J-K.

Before its defanging, Article 370 gave special status to J-K for 70 years.Faesal, who filed first plea against 370 dilution, wants out as petitionerIAS officer Shah Faesal, who moved the first plea challenging the validity of the Centre's August 5, 2019, order defanging Article 370, and another petitioner have filed fresh applications seeking deletion of their names as petitioners.

Faesal, a 2010 batch IAS officer, resigned in 2018 and floated a political party.

However, his resignation was rejected by the Centre and he was reinstated in service.The SC admitted the petition on August 28, 2019, just 23 days after the Centre took the decision to scrap special status for J-K, and had issued notice to the Centre and the J-K government while referring the petitions to a five-judge bench.On March 2, 2020, a bench of Justices N V Ramana, Kaul, R Subhash Reddy, Gavai and Kant had rejected a demand from the petitioners for reference of the issue to a seven-judge bench for adjudication.

The bench had to be recast following the superannuation of CJI Ramana and Justice Reddy.A similar constitutional challenge to the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into AP and Telangana has been pending in the SC for the nine years.03:13Article 370, Ram Mandir, Modi govt fulfilled promises, says Rajnath SinghWatchSupreme Court to examine Article 370 Abrogation of the constitution from Jammu and Kashmir