The Supreme Court on Tuesday held that Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi’s decision to withhold assent to 10 bills, some of which were pending since January 2020, and refer them to the president after they were re-enacted by the Assembly was “illegal and erroneous”, reported Live Law.

A bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan ruled that the governor’s actions violated Article 200 of the Constitution, which lays down the procedure for state legislation. The court declared that the 10 bills would be deemed to have received the governor’s assent from the date they were passed a second time by the legislature.

It also set aside any action taken by the president on the basis of the governor’s reference of the bills.

The judges held that the governor was “not acting with bona fides” and had “shown scant respect” to the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling in a case concerning the delaying of bills by the Punjab governor.

“We are not undermining the office of the governor,” the court said. “All we say is that the governor must act with due deference to the settled conventions of the parliamentary democracy, respecting the will of the people expressed through the legislature as well as the elected government responsible to the people.”

Chief Minister MK Stalin described the verdict as “historic”.

“The Supreme Court has said that the governor withholding bills is illegal…This is a big victory not only for Tamil Nadu but for all the States in India,” Stalin said in the Assembly on Tuesday, reported ANI.

In the judgement, Justice Pardiwala wrote: “The governor must be conscious to not create roadblocks or chokehold the state legislature in order to thwart and break the will of the people for political ends.”

The court also stated that the Constitution does not allow for either a “pocket veto” or an “absolute veto” by the governor. It clarified that a governor has only three options on receiving a bill: granting assent to it, withholding assent and returning it for reconsideration, or reserving it for the president’s consideration (only at the first instance).

“As a general rule, it is not open for the governor to reserve a bill for the president after the bills have been re-presented by the government after being passed again by the Assembly,” the court said. “The only exception is when the bill presented in the second round is different from the first version.”

In the case of the 10 Tamil Nadu bills, the governor neither returned them for reconsideration nor offered any explanation for the delay, the court noted, laying down specific timelines for governors to act on bills under Article 200.

The guidelines are:

  • If a bill is to be withheld or reserved with the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers, a decision must be taken within one month.
  • If the governor withholds or reserves the bill contrary to the government’s advice, the decision must be taken within three months.
  • If a bill is presented again after reconsideration by the Assembly, the governor must give assent within one month.

The Tamil Nadu government had moved the Supreme Court after Ravi did not act on several bills for over three years before rejecting them and sending some to the president. Most of the bills relate to higher education, including measures to remove the governor as chancellor of state universities.

Of the 10 re-enacted bills sent to the president in November 2023, one was approved, seven were rejected and two are pending.

In February, the Supreme Court questioned why the governor had referred the bills to the president after they were passed again by the legislature. It remarked that he appeared to have “devised his own procedure”.

Attorney General R Venkataramani, representing the governor, had argued that the bills were “repugnant” to central laws and had been referred to the president in the national interest. The court rejected this reasoning.

“Despite there being no prescribed time limits, Article 200 cannot be read in a manner which allows the governor to not take action upon [bills] which are presented to him for assent and thereby delay, and essentially roadblock law-making machinery in the state,” the court said.

Pardiwala concluded the judgement by quoting BR Ambedkar, the architect of India’s Constitution: “However good a Constitution may be, if those who are implementing it are not good, it will prove to be bad.”

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