Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 19: The governor – government tussle in several non-BJP ruled states will resume in the Supreme Court on Monday when a division bench headed by the Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud will take up for hearing two separate pleas of the Tamil Nadu and Kerala governments alleging delay by their respective state governors in giving assent to bills passed by the state assemblies.
The tussle is on in several non-BJP ruled states between the elected government and the Centre’s BJP government-appointed governors acting as speed-breakers to delay implementation of the schemes of the state ruling party.
Complaints have come from the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu. West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Punjab and several other non-BJP states and the DMK government of Tamil Nadu and the Aam Aadmi Party government of Punjab had approached the Supreme Court seeking direction to their respective governments to act according the constitution and not as the representative of the central ruling party. The bench also comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra is scheduled to hear the pleas.
The issue comes up in the Supreme Court in the wake of the Tamil Nadu Assembly re-adopting 10 bills and sending them back to the governor RN Ravi for his assent at a special session convened by the speaker on Saturday. The bills were returned by the governor after holding them on for long periods, some of them for even more than two years. But he neither gave his assent to the bills nor assigned any reasons for his disapproval. The move apparently was only aimed at showing to the apex court during the hearing that nothing was pending in the Raj-Bhavan but the ruling party acted fast and dumped the bills back to the governor without making any changes in the bills despite their earlier rejection.
The governor chose to return the bill after being reprimanded by the Supreme Court which held the inordinate delay in acting on the bills passed by the assembly as a “matter of serious concern. The bills returned by the governor covered different departments, including law, agriculture and higher education.
Issuing notice to the Centre, the top court had sought the assistance of the attorney general or solicitor general in resolving the issue. “The issues which have been raised in the writ petition raise a matter of serious concern. From the tabulated statements which have been submitted before this court, it appears that as many as 12 bills which have been submitted to the governor under Article 200 have not elicited any further action.
“Other matters, such as proposals for the grant of sanction for prosecution, proposals for the premature release of prisoners and for the appointment of the members of the Public Service Commission, are pending,” it had said.
The bench headed by CJI Chandrachud had said, “Bearing in mind the situation, we issue notice to the second respondent, namely, the Union of India represented by the secretary to the government in the Ministry of Home Affairs. We request the attorney general of India or, in his absence, the solicitor general of India to assist the court.” It had noted that Article 200 of the Constitution mandates that when a bill is passed by the legislative Assembly of a state or where a state has a bicameral legislature, by both the Houses, it shall be presented to the governor, who shall (1) declare assents to the bill or (2) withhold assent therefrom or (3) reserve the bill for the consideration of the president.
The Tamil Nadu government has urged the top court to intervene in the matter, alleging that “a constitutional authority” is consistently acting in an “unconstitutional manner, impeding and obstructing” the functioning of the state government for “extraneous reasons”.
“Declare that the inaction, omission, delay and failure to comply with the constitutional mandate by the governor of Tamil Nadu/first respondent qua the consideration and assent of the bills passed and forwarded by the Tamil Nadu state legislature to him and the non-consideration of files, government orders and policies forwarded by the state government for his signature is unconstitutional, illegal, arbitrary, unreasonable, besides mala-fide exercise of power,” the petition says.
Similarly, the Kerala government has also moved the apex court against its governor Arif Mohammad Khan for delaying his assent to the bills passed by the Assembly, which is “defeating the rights of the people.”
It has claimed inaction on the governor’s part in relation to eight bills passed by the state legislature and said many of these bills involve immense public interest and provide for welfare measures that would stand deprived and denied to the people of the southern state to the extent of the delay.
“The petitioner — State of Kerala — in fulfilment of its parens patriae obligation to its people, seeks appropriate orders from this court in relation to the inaction on the part of the governor of the state in relation to as many as eight bills passed by the state legislature and presented to the governor for his assent under Article 200 of the Constitution.
“Of these, three bills have remained pending with the governor for more than two years and three more in excess of a full year. The conduct of the governor, as would presently be demonstrated, threatens to defeat and subvert the very fundamentals and basic foundations of our Constitution, including the rule of law and democratic good governance, apart from defeating the rights of the people of the state to the welfare measures sought to be implemented through the bills,” the plea filed by the Kerala government says.