Stalin vows push for constitutional timelines on Governors despite SC’s advisory ruling

The SC on April 8 turned down Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi’s decision to reserve 10 re-enacted state bills for Presidential assent after having earlier withheld approval.

The DMK government “will not rest until the Constitution is amended” to fix timelines for Governors to clear Bills, Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin said on Friday, a day after the Supreme Court said on the Presidential Reference matter that governors and the President cannot be bound by judicially imposed timelines.

Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin. (PTI)

The chief minister, however, claimed that the SC ruling on Thursday will have no impact on the April 8 judgment in the ‘State of Tamil Nadu vs Governor’ case over the issue of Governor RN Ravi not giving his assent to bills. “In cases of prolonged, unexplained, and indefinite delay by the Governor in considering a Bill, states can approach the Constitutional courts and hold Governors accountable for their deliberate inactions,” Stalin said.

For Tamil Nadu, the case also has political implications as it has complained that not just RN Ravi, but governors in non-BJP ruled states across the country are also acting as “political agents of the national party” and stalling functions of the state.

“I believe that no constitutional authority can claim to be above the Constitution,” Stalin said. “When even a high Constitutional authority breaches the Constitution, the Constitutional courts are the only remedy, and the doors of the court must not be closed. This would undermine the rule of law in our constitutional democracy and encourage breaches of the Constitution by governors acting with political intent.”

The state moved the Supreme Court earlier this year amid prolonged tensions between the DMK-led TN government and Governor Ravi, who had withheld assent to several state bills — some for over two years — and later forwarded ten of them to the President after the assembly re-enacted them.

The Supreme Court in its April 8 judgement had struck down Tamil Nadu Governor Ravi’s decision to reserve 10 re-enacted state bills for Presidential assent after having earlier withheld approval, declaring the move “erroneous” and in violation of the Constitution. A majority of the 10 bills were related to vesting the powers of appointing vice chancellors to state varsities from the governor (the de facto chancellor) to either the chief minister or the state government.

“A governor cannot simply sit on a bill or send it to the President after withholding assent without returning it to the Assembly,” the top court had said, adding that as a general rule, the governor cannot reserve a bill for the President after the state assembly has re-passed it, unless the re-enacted version is substantively different from the original. In this case, all ten bills were returned in identical form, and the governor’s subsequent act of referring them to the President was thus held to be unconstitutional. The SC then declared assent to the 10 bills and in a significant step prescribed timelines for governors across the country and the President to act on bills.

On Thursday, the SC bench comprising Chief Justice of India Bhushan R Gavai, and justices Surya Kant, Vikram Nath, PS Narasimha and Atul S Chandurkar, held that April’s two-judge bench ruling generated “a state of doubt and confusion” on several core constitutional questions and required an “authoritative opinion” of the larger bench.

Stalin said that the SC bench’s advisory opinion on Thursday reaffirmed that an elected government should be in the driver’s seat, and there cannot be two executive power centres in the State, Constitutional functionaries must act within the constitutional framework — never above it. “The Governor has no fourth option to kill the Bill or exercise a pocket veto (as was done by the TN Governor). He has no option to withhold the Bill,” Stalin said.

The Constitution bench, however, declined to impose timelines or judicially supervise the substance of assent decisions, but it acknowledged that indefinite stalling of bills cannot be allowed to defeat democratic governance.

Stalin vowed to continue his fight for the rights of the state and federalist principles. “I have promises to keep, and until our people’s will in Tamil Nadu is fulfilled through legislation, we will ensure that every constitutional apparatus functions in this country in accordance with the Constitution,” the CM said.