After a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday said no timeline could be fixed for the President and Governors to act on Bills passed by state legislatures, although “inaction that is prolonged, unexplained and indefinite” by the Governor “will certainly invite limited judicial scrutiny”, a senior DMK leader in Tamil Nadu and Kerala Law Minister P Rajeev welcomed the top court’s opinion to a Presidential Reference. Both states had moved the top court against their governors for sitting on Bills.
The Bench was answering the reference President Droupadi Murmu had made in the wake of a two-judge bench of the court fixing timelines for the President and Governors in its April 8 judgment, while deciding the matter of the Tamil Nadu government challenging the state Governor’s act of withholding assent to 10 Bills. The two-judge bench had ruled that a Bill can be reserved for the President only in the first instance.
While there was no official reaction from the DMK, senior party leader T K S Elangovan told PTI that the court’s advisory opinion was a “good judgment” and would be useful in other cases involving the Governor’s powers. Rajeev, meanwhile, said the court’s opinion was “positive” on issues that the Kerala government had raised. Kerala had approached the top court in November 2023 against then Governor Arif Mohammed Khan, complaining that he was sitting on Bills passed by the Assembly. In July, the Supreme Court allowed the Kerala government to withdraw its plea after the state argued that the April judgment had made the state’s petitions infructuous.
In Tamil Nadu, data provided by the Raj Bhavan said 170 of the 211 Bills (81%) received between September 18, 2021, and October 31, 2025, had been cleared, 95% of those within three months. At present, eight Bills received in the last week of October are pending.
Of 170 Bills cleared, 73 were granted assent within a week, 61 within a month, and 27 within three months. Nine Bills took more than three months to be cleared. Of the 27 Bills reserved for the consideration of the President, 16 were done at the request of the state government, four were returned with a message, and two were withdrawn by the government, according to the Raj Bhavan.
Top government officials said there had been a noticeable acceleration in clearances since the April 8 judgment. However, some politically crucial Bills, particularly those involving university reforms, remain pending or were reserved for Presidential consideration, keeping alive the core constitutional tension between the DMK-led state government and Governor R N Ravi.
The 10 Bills originally withheld by the Governor, after being re-passed by the Assembly, were reserved for Presidential consideration, citing potential conflict with University Grants Commission (UGC) regulations and the limits of state legislative competence, according to the Raj Bhavan. These 10 Bills became a political flashpoint when the DMK-led government, following the court’s April 8 ruling, formally notified the laws as enacted.
The two-judge bench, invoking Article 142 powers, had held that the 10 Bills that had remained pending with the Governor for an “unduly long period of time … as deemed to have been assented on the date when they were presented to the Governor after being reconsidered by the State legislature”. In its answer to the Presidential Reference, the Constitution Bench said that “if there are no prescribed timelines under Articles 200 and 201, then expiry of them too, cannot amount to ‘deemed consent’”.
Pending Bills in Kerala
In Kerala, Law Minister Rajeev said the Left Democratic Front government’s stand had been that “withholding Bills indefinitely is against federalism and democracy”.
“Besides, we had argued that the failure to decide on Bills in a time-bound manner is against the principles of the Constitution and democracy. The apex court opinion on that aspect is very clear. The Court stated that the Bills cannot be withheld indefinitely. If withheld, the Bills should be returned to the Assembly. It has been one of our demands. If the Governor has a view on the Bills passed by the legislature, the Raj Bhavan can send them back to the Assembly with the Governor’s opinion. We had moved the court when the Governor did not return the Bills to the Assembly. Now, the Supreme Court has ratified our stand,’’ he said.
The minister also welcomed that there was an “option for approaching the court under the limited judicial review”.
According to the office of the Law Minister, three Bills passed by the Assembly are pending with the Governor. Two of these Bills — the University Laws (Amendment) Bills, 2025, listed as numbers two and three, pertain to convening the meetings of the Syndicates of various universities in the state. These Bills, passed in October, envisage that the Vice-Chancellor of the university shall convene a meeting of the Syndicate within seven days if a third of the total number of its members request it in writing.
The third Bill pending with the Governor is the Kerala State Private Universities (Establishment and Regulation) Bill, 2025, which the Assembly had passed on March 25.
