I. Introduction

India’s federal architecture rests on a delicate assumption: that the Governor, though appointed by the Centre, functions as a constitutional statesman rather than a political gatekeeper for state legislation. According to Article 200 of the Constitution, a bill passed by a State legislature must be forwarded to the Governor, who is required to either give his assent to the bill, withhold assent and send back the bill for reconsideration, or reserve it for the consideration of the President. The Article, however, does not shed any light on the period of time within which the Governor is obligated to make his choice from the above three options. Over the past three years, this assumption has been tested repeatedly, as Governors in Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and West Bengal have sat on bills passed by elected assemblies for months, sometimes years, without assenting, rejecting, or returning them. The emerging pattern is no coincidence: as the number of states being ruled by Opposition parties increases, the Governors, who are Union representatives, have been steadily using their veto power as a tool in their struggles with the state legislative assemblies, making it a political battleground where it was earlier regarded as just a constitutional norm. The resulting litigation has forced the Supreme Court to answer a question the Constitution’s text leaves oddly open: can a Governor simply do nothing?

II. The Punjab Precedent

Clarity was first provided in State of Punjab v Principal Secretary to the Governor of Punjab (2023), where the Governor had delayed acting on four bills passed by the Vidhan Sabha, instead challenging the legitimacy of the session in which they were enacted. The Supreme Court, in a decision authored by then Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, dismissed this reasoning entirely. The Court held that the Governor is a nominal head who operates on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers and cannot use his position to question the legality of a properly convened legislative session as an indirect route to inaction. The Court further held that the Speaker enjoys exclusive control over the adjournment and reconvening of the House under Article 212, following the reasoning of the Constitution Bench in Ramdas Athawale v Union of India (2010). The real significance of the ruling, however, lay in its reading of the first proviso to Article 200: the phrase “as soon as possible”, the Court held, was not surplusage but a constitutional instruction against indefinite delay. The key concern of the Court was regarding the practical application of the Constitution. If the phrase ‘as soon as possible’ was devoid of any real legal meaning, then the Governor would never have to take a decision on any bill and would just allow it to remain inactive without getting rid of it or assenting to it. Such a situation would facilitate excessive delay, although in fact Article 200 offers three clear alternatives. Hence, the Court adopted the interpretation according to which ‘as soon as possible’ implies a constitutional obligation on the Governor to take decisions within a reasonable time.

III. Tamil Nadu and the Death of the Pocket Veto

This reasoning was tested further in the Tamil Nadu dispute. Governor R.N. Ravi did not act on twelve bills, most concerning the appointment of Vice-Chancellors to state universities, between 2020 and 2023, when the Supreme Court took up the matter. Only after the Court’s intervention did the Governor act, withholding assent to ten bills; when the Assembly promptly re-passed these in the same form, the Governor instead reserved them for the President, a move the state challenged as a constitutional evasion.

In State of Tamil Nadu v Governor of Tamil Nadu (2025), decided by Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan, the Court ruled against the Governor on the legality of this conduct. The judgment made three findings that reshaped the law on Article 200. First, neither a “pocket veto” nor an “absolute veto” has any place in the constitutional scheme; the Governor is obliged to act rather than delay indefinitely. Second, once a bill is returned for reconsideration and re-passed by the legislature, the Governor’s only constitutionally available option is to grant assent; reserving it for the President at that stage was held impermissible. Third, the Court invoked its powers under Article 142 to deem the ten pending bills as having received assent, and laid down general timelines within which Governors and the President are expected to act. By the time the case reached this stage, President Droupadi Murmu had already acted on the reserved bills, assenting to only one, rejecting seven, and leaving two unconsidered; the Court declared all of these presidential actions void ab initio as a consequence of deeming the bills assented.

According to Article 142, the Supreme Court possesses the authority to issue any directive necessary to accomplish complete justice in a matter under its consideration. This authority is more comprehensive than the Supreme Court’s typical powers while adjudicating appeals or writ petitions. But since it is an extraordinary authority, the Supreme Court invokes it only in rare instances when the normal remedies are insufficient. The resort to Article 142 was not incidental to the judgment; it was central to it. Ordinary remedies such as mandamus would only have compelled the Governor to take some decision, not necessarily to grant assent, leaving the door open for further delay dressed up as deliberation. By deeming assent, the Court closed that loophole and signalled that a constitutional office cannot indefinitely frustrate the will of an elected legislature merely by declining to act. The reasoning drew force from the fact that Tamil Nadu was not an isolated episode. Similar disputes over gubernatorial inaction had, by 2025, surfaced in Kerala and West Bengal, where opposition-ruled state governments made comparable allegations of bills being held back for political reasons rather than constitutional ones. The Kerala government, in fact, withdrew its own pending petition before the Supreme Court shortly after the Tamil Nadu judgment, treating it as having settled the law (Supreme Court Observer, 25 July 2025). This wider pattern is part of why the judgment reads less like the resolution of a single Tamil Nadu dispute and more like an attempt to lay down a general constitutional rule for the office of Governor across states.

IV. The Pushback: Article 143 and the Presidential Reference

The Tamil Nadu judgment did not go unanswered. On 13 May 2025, President Droupadi Murmu exercised her advisory jurisdiction under Article 143, referring fourteen questions to the Supreme Court, many of which concerned the very basis of the Tamil Nadu ruling. A five-judge Constitution Bench subsequently delivered its advisory opinion in In re Assent, Withholding or Reservation of Bills by the Governor and the President of India (2025), clarifying, and in places departing from, that judgment. The Bench held that the Governor retains genuine discretion when a bill is first presented, is not invariably bound by ministerial advice, and cannot be subjected to judicially enforced timelines, though it clarified that prolonged, unexplained, and indefinite inaction may still attract limited judicial scrutiny; it further held that courts have no power to “deem” assent under Article 142. Most significantly, it reopened the very point Tamil Nadu had appeared to settle: a bill returned for reconsideration and re-passed by the legislature can still be reserved for the President, rather than mandatorily assented to. Nevertheless, similar to any consultation report, its entire implications will be figured out only when future benches enforce, and possibly add to, this decision when resolving actual legal cases, including the fresh challenge Tamil Nadu has since brought over two university bills reserved for the President.

The opinion is careful to state that it does not formally overrule the Tamil Nadu judgment, describing itself instead as an attempt to “clarify the law” for the future. The tension is nonetheless palpable: two authoritative pronouncements of the same Court now offer materially different answers to the central question of how much discretion a Governor retains once a bill returns from the legislature a second time.

V. What This Means for Federalism

Read together, these cases trace an unusually candid judicial effort to discipline a constitutional office without amending the Constitution itself. The Punjab and Tamil Nadu judgments reflect a Court troubled by the use of gubernatorial delay as an instrument of political obstruction in opposition-ruled states, and willing to deploy robust remedies, including Article 142, to correct it. The advisory opinion, by contrast, reflects a countervailing concern: that judicially imposed timelines and deemed assent risk collapsing the distinction between the Governor’s discretionary constitutional role and a mere ministerial rubber stamp.

For now, the practical position is that Tamil Nadu remains good law and has not been set aside, but the advisory opinion signals that future benches are likely to accord Governors greater discretion than the April 2025 judgment allowed. This problem does not merely signify a conflict between the Governor and the State government. If the workings of Article 200 are not clearly defined, the speed with which States pass legislation may be determined by the nature of their relationship with the Central Government. This may undermine India’s federal system, regardless of which party is in power at the State level or at the Centre. The doctrinal gap between the two is likely to face its first real test the next time a state government finds an important bill gathering dust on a Raj Bhavan desk. Resolving this ambiguity may require more than just a judicial ruling alone. For example, Parliament may choose to amend Article 200 of the Constitution so that there is a time limit for a Governor’s action on bills passed, clarifying the questions left unanswered by the aforementioned judgments. It may also be a good idea to impose a requirement that Governors provide written reasons when they withhold their assent from a bill so that some sort of accountability is achieved. Besides, some kind of understanding or agreement may be reached between the federal government and regional ones on a more or less universal approach to the appointment of Governors.

Ritik Aditya is a second-year law student at OP Jindal Global University. His areas of interest are politics, corporate and the intersection of law and society.