In a hard-hitting interview, which is often sharply critical of the Supreme Court’s judgment on Article 370 and Jammu and Kashmir, pronounced on December 11, Fali Nariman, widely considered India’s foremost constitutional expert, has said it is “totally erroneous and bad in law”.

In a 35-minute interview with Karan Thapar for The Wire, Nariman pointed out that Article 3 of the constitution does not permit – because it does not empower the government to – reduce a state to union territory status.

In the interview, Nariman identified four or five different errors made by the Supreme Court in two specific aspects of its judgment: upholding the dilution of Article 370 and re-organising Jammu and Kashmir, both in terms of the size of the territory as well as in terms of reducing its status from a state to a union territory.

However, Nariman did not accept the claim that the Supreme Court judgment sets any precedents that could affect either the future of states such as West Bengal, Kerala or Tamil Nadu, or the concept of federalism, which is part of the basic structure of the constitution. Nor did he accept The Hindu’s editorial that the judgment suggests “(The) unconscionable conclusion that parliament, while a state is under President’s Rule, can do any act, legislative or otherwise, even with irreversible consequences, on behalf of the state legislature.”

The most important point – which Nariman repeated two or three times in the interview – is that he believes the judgment is “totally erroneous and bad in law”.