A plea challenging dissolution of the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly by Governor Satya Pal Malik on November 21 is listed for hearing in the Supreme Court on Monday.
The case is listed at serial number 33 before a two-judge bench comprising Chief Justice of India RanjanGogoi and Justice Sanjay KishanKoul.
GaganBhagat, a former BharatiyaJanata Party legislator who is at odds with it, has questioned the Governor’s move, calling it “unconstitutional” and “subversion of democracy”.
“The Governor kept the Assembly in the suspended animation mode for five months and when parties claimed to form the government, he dissolved the Assembly. Something was fishy in this and it promoted me to challenge the Governor’s move,” Bhagat had told this newspaper last week. “If Mehbooba Mufti and Sajjad Lone had claimed that they had numbers to form the government, they should have been invited by the Governor to prove their claim. This is what democracy is all about,” Bhagat’s plea in the apex court reads.
On November 21, Governor Malik, while exercising powers vested with him under the J&K Constitution, dissolved the Assembly minutes after Peoples Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti and Peoples Conference chief SajadGani Lone staked claim for forming a government in the state.
Both Mehbooba and Sajad had separately claimed that they had requisite numbers to form the government.
The Governor had, however, justified the dissolution of the Assembly, citing “impossibility of forming a stable government by the coming together of political parties with opposing political ideologies” and the “fragile security scenario in the state where there is a need to have a stable and supportive environment for security forces”.