Article 370 Case : Live Updates From Supreme Court Hearing [Day 9]

Ramakrishnan: Article 370 also reflects and recognises the historical and geopolitical background of a democratic coming together of the will of the people- the will of people of J&K and the will of people of India.

Ramakrishnan: Art 370 reflects and incorporates an entrustment of popular sovereignty to a divisible and shared legal sovereignty between the centre and the state

Ramakrishnan: What Art 370 recognises is the mode of governance because the shared sovereignty of the people of J&K, the merging of their democratic will, with that of the rest of India- in that sense there is a democratic pact entered into which is a part of 370.

Ramakrishnan: Political sovereignty vests in the people. The people of J&K became the sharers of Indian sovereignty as political sovereigns.

Ramakrishnan: We are not waiting for them to integrate anymore. There is a democratic argument to be made of shared sovereignty.

Ramakrishnan: Once they acceded, they became Indians. Even before the Sikh regiment reached Srinagar, it was the Kashmiris in the valley who fought the intruders. Many of them martyred.

Ramakrishnan: Integration is not a measure of how much control the centre has. It is not a function of central control or power. It would be wrong to say that people in UTs are more integrated than people in a VI schedule area. That's not how our democracy works.

Senior Advocate Nitya Ramakrishnan continues argument.

Ramakrishnan: The spoken or unspoken assumption is that Art 370 is temporary, lying for a greater integration. I'm saying that the view is fallacious.

The bench has convened.