India, May 19 -- Just a month after the Supreme Court, on a petition by the Tamil Nadu Government, set a deadline for the President and the State Governors to give assent to bills passed by the legislature, in an unprecedented and perhaps unconstitutional move, President Droupadi Murmu has written to the Supreme Court questioning whether timelines could be imposed on the President and Governors by the Constitutional Courts.

In April, a Bench of Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice R Mahadevan, using the Supreme Court's Special Powers to resolve the face-off between the DMK government in Tamil Nadu and Governor RN Ravi, ruled that the governor's refusal to approve 10 bills passed by the State Legislature was "illegal and arbitrary."

Signific...