Presidential reference: Governors can’t stall Bills, but courts can’t fix timelines; key SC verdict explained

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday held that Governors cannot indefinitely sit on Bills passed by state legislatures, stressing that India’s cooperative federalism demands dialogue with elected Houses rather than obstruction. At the same time, the Constitution Bench made it clear that constitutional courts cannot prescribe hard timelines for governors or the president to act on Bills, nor can they invent a doctrine of “deemed assent” or compel the president to seek the court’s opinion on such legislation. The five-judge Bench, led by chief justice B R Gavai and comprising justices Surya Kant, Vikram Nath, P S Narasimha and A S Chandurkar, delivered its opinion on a presidential reference that questioned whether courts could fix deadlines for constitutional authorities to grant or