Hyderabad: Former Supreme Court judge B.P. Jeevan Reddy on Saturday said that Governor’s offices delaying approvals for Bills passed by the legislature may lead to the enactment of a law to set a timeframe for Governors to give their assent.
Reddy, who had headed the Law Commission of India, said, “If a Governor sits on a decision of the state without forwarding it to the assent of the President and without conveying any decision on the subject, states may make laws fixing timeframes. Things that should be done in good faith should never be dragged.”
Speaking as the chief guest of the Constitution Day programme organised by the Telangana High Court Advocates at the Bar Association Hall on the High Court premises, Reddy said that although there is no written text in the Constitution a about few practices and conventions, conventions emanating from good Parliamentary practices acquired the status of ‘binding precedents’ over time.
Reddy said that although Governors can send Bills back for reconsideration, they will have to give their assent the second time, even if it is passed again without any change.
Sharing an experience, wherein a Governor was insisting that vice chancellors of various universities must be removed — citing one such instance by the Supreme Court — over being appointed in contravention to the law, Reddy said that the call may be right, but that the decision would have to be taken by the state government or moved through courts again.
Attorney-General B.S. Prasad, THCAA executive members V. Raghunath, Pasham Krishna Reddy, Jalli Narender, Gadipally Malla Reddy and Nagaraju, and other advocates took part in the event.
