NEW DELHI: A five-judge bench of Supreme Court led by CJI B R Gavai will on Thursday give its opinion on the Presidential reference questioning SC’s power to fix timelines for the President and governors to grant, refuse and withhold assent to bills passed by assemblies.A bench of CJI Gavai, CJI-designate Surya Kant, and Justices Vikram Nath, P S Narasimha and A S Chandurkar will give its opinion on the reference in which the President has also questioned the use of exclusive powers by SC under Article 142 of the Constitution to grant deemed assent to bills pending with a governor.The reference by the Centre through President was sent to SC on May 14, nearly a month after a bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan took the extraordinary step of granting deemed assent to 10 bills passed by Tamil Nadu assembly that were pending with the governor for months. The bench went a step further by fixing timelines for the governor and the President to grant or refuse assent to bills passed by state assemblies.The Centre, through solicitor general Tushar Mehta, had argued that “while Parliament may amend the Constitution under Article 368 (subject to the basic structure), the judiciary’s role is confined to interpretation. If courts were to expand the meaning of a provision beyond its textual or structural limits, it would confer upon the judiciary a power equivalent to Parliament, a result not envisaged by the framers. Such a course would be contrary to the constitutional scheme.”While opposition-led states, through senior advocates Kapil Sibal and A M Singhvi, had disagreed with grant of deemed assent, they supported the fixing of timelines or the governor and the President, highlighting that constitutional heads had not acted on bills in order to negate elected govt’s efforts to fulfil poll promises or enact reforms.
