Kerala Cites Supreme Court Verdict To Push For Assent On Pending Bills

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala has planned to get its bills pending on the table of the President for accent cleared by using the recent Supreme Court’s landmark judgement that prescribes a time limit for keeping bills in abeyance.

The SC verdict had said that Bills kept pending by Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi can be considered as having received assent as they were not cleared by the Governor.

In the judgement, the court had also said that the President cannot sit over bills referred by Governors without assigning reasons. Kerala points out that the President had not assigned reasons for withholding consent to four of its major Bills. The Supreme Court ruling had made it clear that the President would be required to assign clear and sufficiently detailed reasons while withholding assent to a Bill.

Kerala had earlier approached the Supreme Court against similar acts of former Governor Arif Mohammed Khan. It had also moved the court against President Droupadi Murmu’s act of withholding assent to a few Bills.

Following the latest order of the top court, Kerala has taken the stand that all the Bills that are pending with the President, and those for which she had withheld assent, be deemed as passed since the very act of the Governor sitting on them for long and later referring them to the President was “erroneous in law”.

However, if the Centre files an appeal against the latest judgment, Kerala’s case would become infructuous. Reports indicate that the Centre is planning to file an appeal taking the stand that the Court’s verdict prescribing a time limit is an act of judicial overreach. Such matters should be dealt with by a Constitution bench, say legal experts.

Kerala plans to take the stand that the principles laid down by the top court in the Tamil Nadu case should be equally applied to the Kerala case, and the Bills should be deemed to have been assented to on the date they were presented to the Governor, top law officers of the State were quoted in the media.