When the Governor becomes a wilful obstructionist

The Supreme Court of India’s recent judgement in The State of Tamil Nadu vs The Governor of Tamil Nadu & Anr marks a watershed moment in the ongoing constitutional debate on the role of the Governor in India’s federal framework. In unequivocal terms, the Court held that the Governor’s reservation of 10 legislative bills for presidential consideration — after they had already been re-passed by the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly — was unconstitutional, non-est, and a grave breach of constitutional duty.

While the Court’s intervention has restored legality to a distorted constitutional process, the fact that such an intervention was even necessary demands deeper scrutiny. At its heart, this case is not just about the misuse of Article 200 but about the slow erosion of the federal spirit, orchestrated through the increasingly partisan functioning of gubernatorial offices across opposition-ruled states.

Tamil Nadu is not an isolated example. We have seen similar patterns of gubernatorial obstruction in Punjab and Kerala. In each of these, governors have sat on bills for months, delayed assent, refused appointments, and in some instances, publicly contradicted the elected government’s positions. The judiciary has now had to step in to remind the governor of his constitutional limits — a task that should never have been necessary in the first place.

The Governor of Tamil Nadu had withheld assent to 10 bills passed by the State Legislature, returned them without providing a message for reconsideration (as required under Article 200), and when the Assembly re-passed the same bills without modification, he inexplicably reserved them for the President’s consideration. The Supreme Court held that this sequence of events was a gross violation of constitutional procedure and that such conduct strikes at the heart of parliamentary democracy.

The Court invoked its powers under Article 142 to deem the 10 re-passed bills as having received the Governor’s assent as of November 18, 2023 — the day they were presented to him after reconsideration.
In doing so, the Court not only corrected a constitutional wrong but also sent a clear message: gubernatorial delay or obstruction in the legislative process will not be tolerated.

What makes this particularly troubling is the underlying political context. In a healthy federal democracy, the governor acts as a constitutional figurehead — bound by the aid and advice of the state cabinet and limited in discretion by clearly defined exceptions. The Constituent Assembly, in its wisdom, explicitly removed references to discretionary powers from the provisions concerning assent to legislation. The governor was never meant to act as an alternative power centre, let alone as an extension of the Union executive.

Yet, that is precisely what has transpired in Tamil Nadu. By sitting on crucial legislative proposals, including amendments to university laws and anti-corruption procedures, the governor effectively brought the legislative machinery to a halt. Worse, the silence and delay functioned as a “pocket veto” — an alien concept to the Indian Constitution, but one increasingly deployed through political convenience.

The Court’s judgement reaffirms that such inaction is not just undesirable but unconstitutional. A time limit — judicially implied at three months — has now been set for the governor to act on bills presented for assent. The Court has affirmed that both the governor’s and the president’s actions (or inaction) in such matters are subject to judicial review. No constitutional authority, however exalted, may act beyond the bounds of constitutional morality.

This judgement, while a landmark, must not be seen as the end of the matter. It is a call to political introspection and reform. The office of the governor, if reduced to a political instrument of the Union government, threatens to destabilise the core tenets of federalism. The governor cannot be — and must not be — the political alter ego of the party in power at the Centre. If this becomes the norm, then state governments elected by popular mandate risk being reduced to subordinate units, held hostage by unelected authorities.

The larger issue, therefore, is not legal but political. It concerns the Union government’s use of gubernatorial appointments as tools of centralisation. It concerns the silence of constitutional functionaries when partisan conduct undermines the dignity of their office. And it concerns the willingness of opposition-ruled states to constantly petition the judiciary for relief against a constitutional structure that was never meant to operate this way.

It is imperative that governors across India take this verdict not as a rebuke but as a necessary reaffirmation of their limited and honourable role. They must rediscover their intended function:
that of a constitutional sentinel, not a political supervisor. Anything less undermines not only the Constitution but also the trust of the people in the institutions that derive their authority from it. The Supreme Court has drawn the line. It is now up to the political leadership — at the Union and in the States — to ensure it is not crossed again.

(The writer is a legal researcher specialising in Constitutional law)