New Delhi, Monday, November 23, 2009: The Supreme Court five-judge constitutional bench will start hearing of the Mullaperiyar suit from January 19. The decision was taken in the first sitting of the bench of Justices D.K. Jain, B. Sudershan Reddy, Mukundakam Sharma, R.M. Lodha and Deepak Verma today it also fixed the modalities of hearing.

This development came about after senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for Kerala, told a Bench comprising Justice D K Jain, Justice Mukundakam Sharma and Justice R M Lodha that the judgment passed by the apex court in the year 2006 was without jurisdiction.

He submitted that any dispute between the two States on constitutional questions has to be decided by the Supreme Court under Article 131 only. But the 2006 judgment was on an Article 32 petition, a writ petition, and hence was not legal and therefore without jurisdiction.

These constitutional issues should be heard by a larger Bench, Dhavan submitted. The Bench asked senior counsel Parasaran, appearing for Tamil Nadu, why it could not refer the matter to a Constitution Bench.

Parasaran initially objected but later agreed that the matter may be referred to a Constitution Bench.