New Delhi, Nov. 21 -- The Supreme Court's five-judge Constitution bench on Thursday ruled that governors and the President cannot be bound by judicially imposed timelines in granting assent to state legislation, opining on a presidential reference that any such attempt would violate the separation of powers and overstep constitutional boundaries. The verdict nullifies the April 8 decision by a two-judge bench in the Tamil Nadu case where strict timelines for gubernatorial assent were laid down, besides introducing the concept of "deemed assent" in cases of inordinate delays. The bench said that the previous decision created a "state of confusion and doubt", which requires an "authoritative opinion" of the larger bench. At the same time, the bench clarified that while the discharge of functions under articles 200 and 201 is "non-justiciable," courts may, where there is prolonged, deliberate inaction, issue a limited direction requiring a governor to exercise one of the three constitutionally prescribed options, without dictating which option to choose. By nullifying the April 8 ruling and reaffirming the boundaries of judicial intervention, the Constitution bench may have reiterated the principle of separation of powers between judiciary and executive, but it has left the federal debate open, especially in a highly politicised environment with some states claiming that governors work like agents of the Union government. Delivering its advisory opinion under Article 143, the bench comprising Chief Justice of India Bhushan R Gavai and justices Surya Kant, Vikram Nath, PS Narasimha and Atul S Chandurkar, held that the Constitution envisages a carefully balanced structure for the processing of state legislation, one that does not permit courts to impose procedural timelines on constitutional authorities. The court emphasised that articles 200 and 201 grant the governor and the President a defined, textually rooted discretion, and that importing externally crafted time-bound mandates would not only distort this structure but effectively rewrite the Constitution. The words "as soon as possible" in the proviso to Article 200, the bench clarified, apply only in the narrow context of returning a bill for reconsideration, and cannot be expanded into a general timeline for all forms of assent. The bench further underscored that while ordinarily the governor acts on the aid and advice of the council of ministers, the Constitution also contemplates situations where discretion must be exercised independently. Article 200, it held, is one such provision, especially because the governor's decision may ultimately trigger the President's consideration under Article 201. To read Article 200 as binding the governor entirely to ministerial advice, the court reasoned, would render the reservation power otiose in several situations and contradict the constitutional architecture, which has always envisaged the governor as more than a ceremonial figure modelled on the British Crown. The governor's discretion is not unfettered, the court warned, but it cannot be reduced to a purely "perfunctory" role. With this opinion that sets the law for all courts in the country to follow, the Supreme Court has restored clarity to a contentious constitutional debate at a time when disagreements between state governments and governors have frequently reached the courts. However, for states that complained about gubernatorial inaction, including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Telangana and Karnataka, the ruling offers limited relief. While the Constitution bench declined to impose timelines or judicially supervise the substance of assent decisions, it acknowledged that indefinite stalling of bills cannot be allowed to defeat democratic governance. Where the will of the people expressed through the legislature is frustrated by an absence of decision, courts may intervene in a limited manner. But beyond preventing constitutional deadlock, the court made clear, the judiciary has no role. The decision answered the issues flagged in a reference made by President Droupadi Murmu under Article 143 in May, seeking clarity on whether the Supreme Court can set binding timelines for gubernatorial or presidential assent. The reference places before the Court 14 significant questions, including whether silence in Articles 200 and 201 can be judicially filled by imposing procedural timelines; whether assent-related functions are reviewable; and whether Article 142 can override explicit constitutional provisions. It also asks whether a "deemed assent," as ordered in April, is constitutionally sustainable. Setting out the contours of that discretion, the Constitution bench reiterated that a governor, when presented with a bill, has three constitutionally authorised choices - granting assent, withholding assent and returning the bill (so long as it is not a money bill), or reserving the bill for the President's consideration. Returning a bill with comments, it said, is part of a "constitutional dialogue" meant to promote deliberation rather than confrontation. But while withholding must be accompanied by this dialogic step of returning the bill, the bench made it clear that the governor "cannot withhold assent simpliciter" without invoking this process. Even after the legislature re-enacts a bill following reconsideration, the governor still retains two options - granting assent or reserving it for the President. The notion that reconsideration eliminates these options, the bench held, is contrary to the text and structure of Article 200. In recounting the scope of judicial review, the bench drew a firm line. courts cannot test the merits of a governor's or President's decision under Articles 200 and 201, nor can they examine the legality of bills before they ripen into law. The power of judicial review extends only to cases where a bill is held in abeyance through prolonged and deliberate inaction, in which situation a court may direct the governor to act. Even in those circumstances, the court's role is tightly limited. It can require the governor to choose one of the three constitutional options but cannot instruct which one should be exercised. This, the bench noted, preserves a minimal judicial check to prevent constitutional paralysis without interfering with the constitutional design of discretion. The Constitution bench devoted significant attention to explaining why the April 8 judgment could not stand. That ruling, which imposed a one-month deadline for governors to act on re-enacted bills and created a three-month timeline for bills reserved for the President, was found to be inconsistent with earlier Constitution Bench rulings as well as the constitutional text. By introducing "deemed assent" in cases where its timelines were not met, the April bench had effectively usurped the constitutional role of the governor and President and ventured into a domain exclusively reserved for the executive, it noted. Such judicial action, the Constitution bench held, violated the basic feature of separation of powers and risked unsettling the federal balance. It thus declared that the President's decision to invoke Article 143 was justified because several key conclusions in the April decision conflicted with established precedent and had created uncertainty in the legislative process. Analysing the larger constitutional scheme, the bench observed that Articles 168 (constitution of legislature in state), 200 and 201 together reflect a dialogic model of federal functioning, one that contemplates deliberation between the Governor, the President and the legislature rather than a mechanical process of endorsements or vetoes. According to the court, returning a bill with comments and reserving it for presidential consideration are integral features of this design, meant to ensure that questions of constitutional validity, federal implications or inter-state effects are given proper attention. Imposing judicial timelines, the court held, disregards this deliberative scheme and risks reducing complex constitutional functions into an inflexible administrative timetable. It stressed that while judicial review remains a cornerstone of the constitutional order, courts must respect the domain-specific boundaries set by the Constitution. The discretionary powers under Articles 200 and 201, it held, fall within the protected sphere of high constitutional offices, immune from judicial direction except in cases of deliberate inaction. Even in such cases, courts cannot step into the shoes of these authorities by prescribing timelines, substituting their decisions, or creating legal fictions such as deemed assent. Article 142, the bench cautioned, is not a license to rewrite constitutional provisions. Among the 14 questions in the reference, the bench declined to answer three questions, holding that they fell outside the "functional" scope of the inquiry into the constitutional roles of governors and the President. It refused to respond to a question, which dealt with Article 145(3) and the composition of benches in the Supreme Court, noting that determining whether a matter raises a substantial constitutional question and deciding the strength of the bench that will hear it lie exclusively within the judicial domain and the administrative prerogative of the Chief Justice of India....