New Delhi: On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a notice about the number of cases for which the Kerala and West Bengal governments have filed petitions. Both states have filed a constitutional lawsuit against their respective governors, whereby the governors have been accused of procrastinating on signing many bills and sending them to the President for his assent.
The petitions call for the release of eight bills that the governors have held for over a year without any reason. Due to this, the bill-taking process has occasioned a lot of legal tussle with the state governments seeking court’s intercession.
A bench having DY Chandrachud CJ, JB Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra JJ addressed the matter to serve notices to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs and the secretaries to the concerned governors. This step poses a major pointer to solving the endless hurdle between the state governments and the governors.
In the case of Kerala, senior advocate KK Venugopal has argued that this challenge is aimed at the governor’s action to recommend the bills for reference to the president. For its part, the government of Kerala argues that this referral process is an added procedure and an act that hinders the passing of bills.
On similar lines, senior advocates Abhishek Singhvi and Jaideep Gupta, appearing for West Bengal, stressed that every time the matter was listed before the Top Court, the governor’s office had referred the bills to the President. This repeated action, they say, has effectively frozen the legislative process, hence their legal action to halt it.
The intervention of the Supreme Court is meant to calm the state governments and fast forward the decision-making of on bills that have lingered for so long. This case could potentially change how the state-operated depending on the results of the case and the approval and processing of legislative bills by the governor.
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