In a major setback to Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi, who has been withholding several bills passed by the state assembly, the Supreme Court found his decision to withhold assent for 10 bills and reserving them to the President even after they were re-enacted by the state Assembly as “illegal and erroneous”.
A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan said that as a consequence, any subsequent steps taken by the President, too, do not survive. In an extraordinary move, the court exercising powers under Article 142 of the Constitution also declared the 10 Bills as having received assent.
The Apex Court ruled that“having regard to the unduly long period of time for which these bills were kept pending by the Governor before the ultimate declaration of withholding of assent and in view of the scant respect shown by the governor” to the court’s decision in similar matters before.
Pronouncing the verdict for the Bench, Justice Pardiwala, however, said there was no concept of “absolute veto” or “pocket veto” under the Constitutional scheme. The top court set timelines for the Governors’ decision under Article 200 on Bills sent him by the Assembly for assent. A Bill can be reserved for the President only at the first instance, it said.
The Bench further declared that any consequential steps taken by the President on the said 10 Bills would be non-est in law. It deplored that the Governor did not act in a bona fide manner as the Bills were sent to the President after the Governor himself sat over them over a long time.
The Bills were reserved for the President soon after the top court’s ruling in the Punjab Governor’s case that a Governor cannot veto bills by simply sitting over them.
Under Article 200 of the Constitution, the Governor can either grant assent to Bills or withhold his assent or reserve the same for the President. “We are in no way undermining the office of the government. All we say is that the governor must act with due deference to the settled conventions of parliamentary democracy, respecting the will of the people being expressed through the legislature as well as the elected government responsible to the people” the Bench noted.
It further said that he must perform his role of a friend, philosopher and kind with dispassion guided not by considerations of political experience but by the sanctity of the constitutional oath he undertakes,” said the bench.
