'Jhelum And Ganga Have Merged...': Kashmiri IAS Officer Shah Faesal Clears Stand On Article 370

New Delhi: With the Supreme Court fixing July 11 to hear pleas challenging the abrogation of Article 370, IAS officer Shah Faesal, one of the petitioners has said that the matter now is a "thing of the past". While talking to ANI over the phone, the bureaucrat said that he has withdrawn his petition challenging the Presidential Order to scrap Article 370 a long time back. "I have withdrawn the petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Presidential Order to scrap Article 370 long ago," he said.

Taking to Twitter, the IAS officer said that there is no going back, but only marching forward. Faesal was the lead petitioner challenging the abrogation of Article 370 nearly four years after it was implemented on August 5, 2019.

"370, for many Kashmiris like me, is a thing of the past. Jhelum and Ganga have merged in the great Indian Ocean for good. There is no going back. There is only marching forward," Shah said in his tweet.

Faesal a 2010 batch IAS officer who topped the Civil Service Exam and posted in Jammu and Kashmir had resigned in January 2019 and floated his own party- Jammu Kashmir People's Movement- with Shehla Rashid. Faesal's unprecedented resignation from his own political outfit came in August 2020. The Centre rejected his resignation and he was reinstated in service.

The Supreme Court's five-judge Constitution bench will hear on July 11 a batch of petitions challenging the abrogation of Article 370 and bifurcation of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union territories.

A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, and Surya Kant is set to hear the case on July 11. The Court will also take up the issue of whether the petition by bureaucrat Shah Faesal can be withdrawn. The petitions which are pending since 2019 have not been taken up for hearing since March 2020.

Various petitions are pending before the top court challenging the validity of the law scrapping Article 370 of the Constitution and special status to Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcating the state into two Union Territories. On August 5, 2019, the Central government announced its decision to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir granted under Article 370 and split the region into two Union territories.

A five-judge Constitution bench in March 2020 had declined to refer to a larger 7-judge bench a batch of petitions challenging the Constitutional validity of the Centre's decision to abrogate provisions of Article 370 on August 5, saying there were no reasons to refer the matter to a larger bench.

A number of petitions have been filed in the top court including those of private individuals, lawyers, activists and politicians and political parties challenging the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, which splits Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.