10 days of hearings weigh courts’ role in fixing timelines for assent
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its verdict after 10 days of marathon hearings on a Presidential reference asking whether a constitutional court can impose timelines on Governors and the President for assenting to Bills passed by State legislatures.
On the final day, the court referred to itself as the "custodian of the Constitution" and asked if it could "sit idle" when a constitutional authority failed to discharge its duties. When Solicitor General Mehta invoked the doctrine of separation of powers to argue against judicial timelines, the bench interjected. Chief Justice Gavai remarked: “Whosoever high one may be, as a custodian of the Constitution... though judicial activism has to be there, there should not be judicial terrorism or adventurism. But if one wing of democracy fails to discharge its duty, is the custodian powerless and bound to sit idle?"
The hearings focused on Articles 200 and 201 and the core issue of whether constitutional courts can direct Governors or the President to act within specific timelines.
Mehta contended that issuing a writ of mandamus directing Governors to act on Bills would violate the separation of powers, which is part of the Constitution's basic structure. While acknowledging that Governors cannot indefinitely hold Bills, he argued they retain discretionary powers under Article 200. He cited hypothetical situations, such as a legislature passing a Bill declaring secession from the Union, where Governors must exercise discretion and withhold assent.
He added that Article 200 gives Governors four options on Bills, with implied discretion in situations involving constitutional values or matters of national importance. The term "as soon as possible" in the Article, he stressed, could not be stretched to mean "indefinitely."
Mehta also pointed out that 90 per cent of Bills passed by State Assemblies since 1970 had received gubernatorial assent within a month, with assent withheld only 20 times out of 17,150 Bills. He argued that the absence of express timelines in the Constitution reflected a "cautious choice of words" rather than a gap requiring judicial intervention.
The reference stems from President Droupadi Murmu's May invocation of Article 143(1), rarely used, to pose 14 questions to the Supreme Court on whether courts can impose timelines for the President's discretion when dealing with Bills passed by State legislatures.
A Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai, and comprising Justices Surya Kant, Vikram Nath, P.S. Narasimha, and A.S. Chandurkar, heard arguments from Attorney General R. Venkataramani, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, and senior advocates Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Singhvi, Gopal Subramanium, Arvind Datar, among others.
