SC pulls up TN Governor, sets deadline to clear bills

Context

• The Supreme Court on Tuesday slammed Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi’s conduct as “unconstitutional”, criticising his prolonged inaction on 10 key Bills. The court noted that he failed to act for months before swiftly referring the Bills to the President, only after they were re-passed by the State Legislature and came under judicial scrutiny.

• The top court deemed the 10 Bills to have received assent, declaring President Droupadi Murmu’s actions — assenting to only one, rejecting seven, and not considering two — to be void.

• It also fixed time limits, of one to three months, for Governors to take action on future Bills.

• The court said that a Governor must be a “friend, guide and philosopher” to the State, not a hindrance. “A Governor is envisaged as a sagacious counsellor... What unfolded in the current litigation was quite the opposite,” a Bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan observed.

• Justice Pardiwala, who authored the judgment, said that Mr. Ravi had acted as a “roadblock” by delaying action on the Bills sent to him for consent by the Assembly under Article 200 of the Constitution.

• Article 200 gives a Governor three choices:

1to assent,

2withhold assent, or

3reserve the bills for consideration by the President.

• A Governor cannot indefinitely delay exercising his or her choice, the court said.

• “Once a Bill is presented to the Governor, he is under a Constitutional obligation to opt for one of the three choices… The phrase ‘as soon as possible’ permeates Article 200 with a sense of expediency and does not allow Governors to sit on Bills and exercise pocket veto over them”.