In a landmark judgment delivered on November 10, 2023, in the State of Punjab vs Principal Secretary to the Governor of Punjab and Another, the Chief Justice of India (CJI), D.Y. Chandrachud, gave a creative interpretation to Article 200 of the Constitution of India which relates to the options before a Governor when a Bill, after being passed by the State Legislature, is presented to him for his assent. The new interpretation relates to the real meaning of the first proviso to Article 200 which says that the Governor may send the Bill back to the Assembly with a request for re-consideration of the Bill as a whole or certain provisions thereof.
It further says that if the Assembly after such re-consideration passes the Bill with or without the amendments, the Governor shall not withhold assent from the Bill. There has been a considerable amount of confusion about the meaning of Article 200 and this proviso. Most of the commentators of the Constitution, like D.D. Basu and others, have held the view that the Governor’s power to withhold assent under this Article has a finality about it, and once assent is withheld, the Bill dies a natural death. They were also of the view that the option of sending the Bill back to the Assembly for reconsideration under the first proviso is discretionary and not mandatory. Thus, there was a presumption that the Governor’s power to withhold assent from a Bill is absolute.
