New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday, December 14, said it would consider a plea for early listing of petitions challenging the Union government’s decision to read down provisions of Article 370 which had given special status to Jammu and Kashmir.“We will examine and give a date,” a bench comprising Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice P.S. Narasimha said, when intervenor Radha Kumar, an academic and author, sought early listing of the petitions on the issue.According to LiveLaw, the hearings on the Article 370 cases commenced before a five-judge bench in December 2019, almost four months after the Union government notifications in August 2019.However, the bench on March 2, 2020, had declined to refer to a larger seven-judge bench the batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Union government’s decision to read down Article 370.The five-judge bench comprised former CJI N.V. Ramana and former judge R. Subhash Reddy, and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, B.R. Gavai and Surya Kant.NGO, People’s Union of Civil Liberties, Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association, and an intervenor had sought referring of the matter to a larger bench on grounds that two judgments of the apex court – Prem Nath Kaul versus Jammu and Kashmir in 1959 and Sampat Prakash versus Jammu and Kashmir in 1970 – which dealt with the issue of Article 370 conflicted each other and therefore, the bench of five judges could not hear the issue.Disagreeing with the petitioners, the bench had said it was of the opinion that “there is no conflict between the judgments”.The petitions have not been listed after March 2, 2020, the report added.In September this year, former CJI U.U. Lalit had said that the pleas would “certainly” be listed after the Dusshera breaks. However, the petitions did not get listed.(With inputs from PTI)