SC pulls up TN governor for sitting over bills, seeks answer
Court demands record of what was discussed, what was looked into, and the lacunae in the bills that Governor RN Ravi found to withhold them
The Supreme Court on Thursday (February 6) pulled up Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi for withholding assent to some Bills submitted by the state Assembly, demanding answer from him on the matter.
Hearing the Tamil Nadu government’s petitions against the governor, who also referred some bills to the president, a two-judge bench said: “It doesn’t make any sense … Saying that ‘I withhold assent but not ask you to reconsider the Bills’… He seems to have adopted his own procedure.”
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Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan told Attorney General R Venkataramani to show the court what weighed with the governor in arriving at the decision to withhold assent.
‘What weighed with governor?’
“(The) governor could have drawn the attention of the government. He could have said a, b, c, d… you need to reconsider. Otherwise, how shall the court understand what weighed with him? You can’t show us by way of an affidavit filed by any other officer. You need to show us from some contemporaneous record available with the office of the governor as to what was discussed, what was looked into, what are the lacunae, what are the loopholes which the governor found,” said Justice Pardiwala.
The judge pointed out that the Tamil Nadu government had alleged “not just malice in law, but malice in fact also”. The hearing will resume Friday.
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Attorney General’s defence
Venkataramani told the court that the governor had not returned the Bills to the Assembly for reconsideration, but only withheld assent.
After the Assembly re-enacted two Bills, he sent them to the president citing repugnancy.
The bench sought to know why the governor kept the Bills pending for three long years before declaring that he was withholding assent.
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The bench pointed out that the governor’s decision to withhold assent came three days after the apex court ruled in the Punjab governor’s case that the governor “cannot veto the Assembly by sitting over Bills”.