Supreme Court declared that persons occupying the offices of Governor and President may do whatever they wish, and the judiciary has no authority even to question them!
Published Nov 23, 2025 | 11:00 AM ⚊ Updated Nov 23, 2025 | 11:00 AM
Chief Justice of India BR Gavai.
Synopsis: In a recent judgement, the Supreme Court said that if the Governor does not wish to assent to a bill, he must return it — but the judiciary has no authority to prescribe a time limit. Translated into simple language, the Supreme Court has essentially declared that persons occupying the offices of Governor and President may do whatever they wish, and the judiciary has no authority even to question them!
The tenure of Chief Justice of India (CJI) BR Gavai ends on Sunday, 23 November. Since the Supreme Court has holidays on Saturday and Sunday, and because Friday was reserved for farewell meetings, Thursday was the last day on which he sat on the bench to hear arguments, conduct hearings, and pronounce judgements.
On that final day, he delivered one judgement as part of a division bench and another as part of a five-judge Constitutional Bench. In that sense, these two judgements can be considered Justice Gavai’s final pronouncements.
The first of these judgements struck down the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021, which the government had enacted despite the courts earlier having struck down an ordinance on the same subject. After the ordinance was invalidated, the government enacted the very same provisions as law, but the Supreme Court has now ruled this law invalid.
This judgement concerns a law that governs who may be appointed to tribunals constituted by the Union government, what qualifications they must have, how long their tenure should be, and whether they may be reappointed once that tenure ends. The judgement applies only to such tribunals and to the members appointed to them.
However, the case underlying the second judgement is one that can trigger serious political consequences in the future. It is one that could destroy the very spirit of the Constitution and the federal character of the nation. It would strip the states of their rights and hand excessive, unrestrained and arbitrary power to the central government. Yet in this case, Chief Justice Gavai and the five-judge bench delivered an unjust judgement that undermines the character of the Constitution.
One must understand in detail what this judgement is, the circumstances in which it was delivered, and the harmful consequences it is set to unleash —consequences that lay the foundation for severe distortions in the future, or, more accurately, strengthen foundations that already exist.
The institution of the Governor has long been criticised as an instrument of authoritarian control wielded by the Union government over elected state governments.
Particularly when the ruling party at the Centre is different from the one governing a state, the Union government has often sent party loyalists as Governors to undermine or harass the elected state government and to turn the Raj Bhavan into a political command centre. Every political party in power at the Centre has engaged in this practice; none is an exception.
Until 1967, both the Centre and the states were governed mostly by the Congress, so the Union government had no need to use the gubernatorial office in this manipulative manner. However, from then on, whenever the party ruling at the Union government was different from the one ruling a state, the Centre began using the Governor to twist arms, to exert pressure, and to create trouble for the state government.
Congress, Janata Party, the United Front, the UPA — all governments did this. Today, the Sangh Parivar government, under the banner of the NDA, has elevated this tactic into an art. It appoints Sangh Parivar loyalists as Governors and uses them to surveil, harass, pressure, and engage in petty politics against states ruled by opposing parties.
In this same sequence, to trouble the DMK government in Tamil Nadu, former police officer and ideological Sangh Parivar worker RN Ravi was appoined there as Governor. From the day he arrived in 2021, he not only transformed the Chennai Raj Bhavan into a hub of Sangh Parivar activity but also began obstructing the actions and policies of the elected DMK government at every step.
Relying on the constitutional requirement that bills passed by the Legislature become law only after receiving the Governor’s assent, he began sitting on bills indefinitely without signing them.
According to the Constitution, the Governor has only three powers regarding a bill: To assent to it, to withhold assent and return it with suggested amendments, or to reserve it for the consideration of the President.
The Constitution does not specify a fixed time limit for doing any of these things, but it does say the Governor must act “as soon as possible.” Courts have, until now, never clarified what this phrase means.
Governor Ravi kept 10 bills sent by the Tamil Nadu government pending for three years. He neither signed them nor returned them. If he had returned them, the Legislature could have reconsidered them — either with amendments or in their original form — and resubmitted them, after which the Governor would be constitutionally bound to give assent. It was precisely to avoid this that Ravi did nothing.
After waiting for three years, the Tamil Nadu government approached the Supreme Court. While the case was under hearing, the Governor sent the bills to the President for her consideration.
They remained pending with the President for over a month. On 8 April, a historic and sensational judgement was delivered by a division bench of Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice R Mahadevan. The court declared that withholding assent without signing or returning the bill was unconstitutional and, because such an unreasonable delay had already occurred, the bills must be deemed to have been assented to.
It further ordered that henceforth both the Governor and the President must act on bills—either by signing them or returning them — within a fixed period of three months.
In one sense, this judgement was a necessary blow against the Union government’s arbitrary authority over states. It was a true affirmation of federal principles. It offered a proper answer to fundamental questions: Do the people’s elected representatives in a state have the authority to make laws? Can that authority be obstructed by a Governor appointed by the Union government?
This judgement was not merely a challenge to the authority of the BJP-led government. Any party can come to power at the Centre. Whenever a different party governs a state, this judgement limits the Union government’s ability to harass such states.
However, the BJP treated this judgement as a challenge to its power. Within a month of the judgement, the President’s office sent a fourteen-question letter, seeking opinions of the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice. Responding to that letter, the governments of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Punjab, and the Union government all presented their arguments.
After hearing them, the Supreme Court reserved its judgement on 7 September. On Thursday, CJI Gavai and Justices Surya Kant, Vikram Nath, PS Narasimha and AS Chandurkar delivered a verdict that, while appearing to adhere to Articles 200, 201, and 361 of the Constitution, was in fact unjust, anti-federal, hostile to the rights of state governments, and violative of the spirit of the Constitution.
This judgement states, in literal terms, that if the Governor does not wish to assent to a bill, he must return it — but the judiciary has no authority to prescribe a time limit. It says that although the Constitution directs the Governor to act on the advice of the Council of Ministers, this does not mean he is bound to follow it unfailingly, and that he may act on his own discretion.
It says the judiciary has no authority to declare that bills must be deemed to have been assented to. It says the judiciary has no authority to question or review the actions of the Governor or the President. And it declares that the actions of the Governor and the President are not justiciable — that the courts have no jurisdiction over them.
Translated into simple language, the Supreme Court has essentially declared that persons occupying the offices of Governor and President may do whatever they wish, and the judiciary has no authority even to question them!
Article 361 does indeed provide some support for the Supreme Court’s view. However, the Supreme Court also has the power to review, revise, and interpret even that Article. When the appropriate moment finally arrived, the Supreme Court shirked that responsibility.
The debatable Article 361, titled “Protection of President and Governors,” once also included the term “Rajpramukh,” which was removed in 1956, but otherwise it has remained unchanged. Yet it is an unjust, undemocratic, and authoritarian provision.
It is contrary to the concept of equality among all citizens expressed in the Preamble, and to the equality before the law guaranteed by Article 14. Only in medieval monarchies were kings and emperors given such unquestionable immunity. Granting such absolute, unreviewable power to two offices in a modern, democratic republic is nothing short of authoritarianism.
The present Sangh Parivar government may feel that such a judgement is necessary to continue its own agenda of suppressing state governments.
However, this judgement destroys the pluralism and diversity of this country as well as the federal character that arises precisely from that pluralism and diversity. In essence, this judgement dismantles the basic structure of the Constitution itself.
(Views are personal. Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
