A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India has reserved its judgment on the question of whether Parliament has the power to alter state boundaries, bifurcate states or create new union territories without the consent of the concerned state legislature under Article 3 of the Constitution.
**BACKGROUND**
The Constitution Bench was constituted in the backdrop of challenges to the reorganisation of the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir into two union territories by the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019. Similar questions arise from the Andhra Pradesh reorganisation that created Telangana in 2014.
**THE CENTRAL CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION**
Article 3 of the Constitution empowers Parliament to form new states by separation of territory from any state, increase the area of any state and diminish the area of any state. However, the Article also provides that a Bill to do so must be referred to the legislature of the affected state for expressing its views — though Parliament is not bound by those views.
The key question before the Bench was: does this procedure, which allows Parliament to override a state legislature's objection, violate the basic structure of the Constitution insofar as it affects the federal character of the Indian polity?
**ARGUMENTS**
The Solicitor General argued that Article 3 is an express constitutional provision conferring plenary power on Parliament and cannot be said to violate a basic structure that the Constitution itself has created.
Senior advocates for the petitioners contended that while Parliament has the power to reorganise states, it cannot do so by completely extinguishing the statehood of a unit — converting it into a Union Territory removes it from the federal compact entirely.
**SIGNIFICANCE**
The judgment, when delivered, will have profound implications for federal governance in India and may set limits on Parliament's reorganisation powers for the first time.
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