NEW DELHI: Frowning upon the Tamil Nadu governor for acting in violation of constitutional provisions by sitting on bills forwarded to him after being passed by the state assembly, Supreme Court, in an extraordinary and first-of-its-kind decision, held that 10 bills reserved by the governor be deemed to have been assented by him, and fixed a timeline for Raj Bhavans to decide on giving or denying nod to bills passed by state legislatures in a time-bound manner in order to prevent what happened in Tamil Nadu.
As the Constitution restricts itself to saying that the governor has to act “as soon as possible” but does not prescribe any timeline, a governor can delay the decision on assent, a prerequisite for a legislation to become law, for months. The court said if assent was to be given, then it has to be done within a month. The court set a timeframe of three months in case a bill is sent to the assembly for reconsideration or to the President. In case a bill is re-sent after reconsideration by the assembly, the governor must grant assent in a month. The court also said any breach of the timeline could be challenged in court. In Tamil Nadu’s case, one bill has been pending for over five years.
Constitution doesn’t let guvs exercise absolute veto: SC
While saying that the Tamil Nadu governor had acted in violation of constitutional provisions by sitting on bills, a Supreme Court bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan on Tuesday said he had shown “scant respect” to various verdicts of the apex court and did not act with bona fides while referring the bills to the President after it was re-sent by the state assembly after reconsideration. It held that governor has no option but to give assent once the bill has been sent back to him after reconsideration by the assembly. The Constitution does not allow him to exercise “absolute veto” or “pocket veto” by indefinitely delaying decision on bills, the bench said.
Reading out the operative part of the verdict, Justice Pardiwala, who penned the judgment, said as per Article 200 of the Constitution, governor has only three options when a bill is placed before him — grant assent, withhold it and send it back for reconsideration, or reserve it for the President. It said a bill could be reserved for the President only at the first instance and not when it was sent after reconsideration by the assembly.
“As a general rule, it is not open for the governor to reserve a bill for the President after the bill has been re-presented by the govt after being passed again by the assembly. The only exception is when the bill presented in the second round is different from the first version,” Justice Pardiwala said.
On Tamil Nadu governor’s contention that he could withhold assent to bills without sending them back to the assembly for reconsideration, the court said such an option was not available under the Constitution.
“Withholding of assent or reservation of bills for the consideration of the President, after their due reconsideration by the state legislature, being in contravention of the procedure prescribed under Article 200, is declared erroneous in law and thus hereby set aside. As a result of the above finding, any consequential steps that might have been taken by the President on these 10 bills is set aside,” the bench said.
“Having regard to the unduly long period of time for which these bills were kept pending by governor, before the ultimate declaration of withholding of assent, and in view of the scant respect shown by the governor to the decision of this court in ‘State of Punjab’ (case), and for other extraneous considerations that appear to be writ large in discharge of his functions, we are left with no choice but to exercise our inherent powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to declare these 10 bills to have been deemed to have got assented,” it said.
