AA Edit | Governors and Bills: More Clarity By SC Was Needed

The Supreme Court’s answers to the presidential reference on an earlier verdict of the court on the powers of state governors and the President while acting under Article 200 and Article 201 of the Constitution settles part of the controversy that cropped up in many states over the same but leaves unattended some of the substantial issues that the court itself calls “strike at the root of the continuation of our republican and democratic way and the Constitution’s federal character”.

It is welcome that the court has brought some finality to the matter of whether a governor can or cannot sit on a bill forever. This was a badly needed clarification as several of them sat on bills for as long as four and five years. The Tamil Nadu governor even went to the extent of publicly declaring that if the governor withholds assent “it means bill is dead”. Even the Union government took the stand that the governor can withhold the bill without returning to the House. The court has upended that option by decreeing that “withholding of assent must be accompanied by the returning of the bill to the Assembly” and insisted that “to permit the governor to withhold the bill without returning it to the house will derogate the principle of federalism”. That is a mighty observation upholding the basic structure of our Constitution.

The court has been, however, categorical in that there is no constitutional sanction for the concept of “deemed assent”, mooted by an earlier verdict in a case moved by the Tamil Nadu government aggrieved by the inordinate delay by the governor in signing bills into laws. The court’s position that prescribing time limits for both the governor and the President to take decisions on bills are beyond its remit is justifiable. It has only upheld the constitutional principle of separation of powers while deciding that the decisions are not justiciable. However, the court appears to have failed in appreciating the circumstances which forced the concept of deemed assent, and has offered no fresh remedy for it except saying the governor and the President will decide within a “reasonable time”.

The cardinal issue that brought the court into the very question on Article 200 is the self-assumed power by governors who chose to sit in judgment of bills passed by state Assemblies though they have no constitutional backing for that act. It is back to square one when the court says that it can exercise a limited power of judicial review and direct the governor to decide in a time-bound manner without prescribing a time limit. It is interesting that the court refers to the federal structure and the rights of the state legislatures but refused to consider the very question of whether a state government would move a constitutional court if the governor had decided on a bill in a “reasonable time”.

The courts have repeatedly said that the Constitution is a living document and can be interpreted to address issues that come up from time to time. The presidential reference and the Supreme Court’s reply to it can very well form the basis for a new discourse on the legislature’s rights vis-a-vis gubernatorial powers when it comes to legislation.