Daily Briefing: On separation of powers

🚨Big Story

The Supreme Court has said that no timelines can be fixed for the President and Governor to act on Bills passed by legislature. The court was rendering its opinion on a reference made by President Droupadi Murmu on an earlier ruling. However, the court underlined that “prolonged, unexplained and indefinite” delay in granting assent to Bills would invite “limited judicial scrutiny”.

For context: A presidential reference, as outlined in Article 143 of the Constitution, allows the President to refer a question of law or fact to the Supreme Court for its opinion. Unlike a ruling, an opinion is not binding. The court may also choose not to answer the reference.

Zoom in: Essentially, the opinion rolls back parts of the April ruling, which had held that the Tamil Nadu Governor’s delay in granting assent was unconstitutional. It had set timelines for the Governor and the President to act on Bills. The court also rejected the concept of “deemed assent” introduced in the April verdict for certain pending Bills. In all, the court answered 14 questions put forth by President Murmu, details of which can be read here.

Zoom out: The court effectively has defined its role in the state vs Centre debate as that of a dialogue facilitator. While ensuring the separation of powers, the court has left the door open for states to move court in “glaring circumstances”. Read Apurva Vishwanath’s insights.

⚡Only in Express

Probe on: Investigators are in the process of uncovering as much as possible about the terror module linked to the Red Fort blast case. Just a day before the explosion, J&K police had arrested two doctors linked to the terror module. Now, they have found that one alleged foreign handler had sent 42 videos on making bombs via encrypted apps to Muzammil Ahmad Ganai, one of the arrested doctors, who is also an associate of Umar Nabi, the driver of the i20 car. Here’s what we know.

🎧 For more on the probe, tune in to today’s ‘3 Things’ podcast episode.

📰 From the Front Page

Lost glory: Let me take you back to the 19th century. Poet Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay sits in his ‘Baithakkhana’, a single-storeyed building with shikhara domes and arched doorways in Kantalpara. In this three-room parlour, Chattopadhyay would write Vande Mataram, India’s national song, which marks its 150th anniversary this year. Today, the Baithakkhana is fighting for survival, with years of neglect leaving it in need of urgent repairs.

📌 Must Read

Post-mortem: What led to the Congress’s crushing defeat in the Bihar Assembly elections? We asked ten losing candidates from the party for their take. Among the issues they flagged were: AICC’s Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru’s “non-political” style of working, “failure” of Rahul Gandhi’s Voter Adhikar Yatra to woo voters, and the nomination of “outsiders”. Read.

Next, please: After its landslide win in Bihar, the BJP has set its sights on West Bengal, where it has struggled to dethrone the ruling TMC. Party insiders told The Indian Express that the biggest challenge before the BJP is to get rid of the “outsider” tag given by TMC chief Mamata Banerjee. Here’s the plan.

Scam 2025: Rs 317 crore, 148 shell companies, and a big industrialist: These are ingredients of the latest cyberfraud uncovered by the West Bengal Police. A single complaint lodged in April 2024 led the police to a network of shell companies, 73 of which have ‘9, Ezra Street, Kolkata’, as their registered address. Following the money trail, the police zeroed in on “tycoon” Pawan Ruia, his family and aide. Sweety Kumar brings you all the details.

⏳ And Finally…

Delhi Crime Season 3 uncovers an inter-state human trafficking racket that demonstrates that crimes against women are a national problem, not a local one. As my colleague Saraswati Dhar writes, the Netflix series asks a pertinent question: can girls really go missing if they are invisible or unwanted in the first place?

PS — Watch lead actors Shefali Shah (plays DIG Vartika Chaturvedi) and Huma Qureshi (Meena Chaudhary) get candid with SCREEN at 8 pm today on the Indian Express YouTube channel.

That’s all for today, folks! Happy weekend!
Sonal Gupta

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