The Tamil Nadu Government on Saturday notified ten State Acts in the official gazette after the Supreme Court judgment that declared the relevant Bills as “deemed to have been assented” to by Governor RN Ravi. This is the first instance wherein statute has been operationalised without the assent from the Governor or the President, but by a Supreme Court ruling.

The notification by the DMK Government was issued a day after the top court put its judgment on the Apex Court’s website on late Friday night.

“History has been made as these are the first Acts of any legislature in India to have taken effect without the signature(s) of the Governor/President but on the strength of Supreme Court judgment,” Senior Advocate and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MP P Wilson wrote on ‘X’.

The gazette notifications explicitly cited the Supreme Court’s April 8 judgment which held that once a Bill has been returned by the Governor and then re-passed by the legislature, the Governor is constitutionally bound to assent to it and cannot refer it to the President.

“All actions of the President after date of reserving the abovesaid Bill is non-est in law and shall be deemed to have been assented to by the Governor on the date on which the said Bill was presented to him for assent,” the State Government noted in its publication.

The Acts notified on Saturday primarily concern State control over Universities, with several replacing the Governor as Chancellor of key institutions in the southern State, including Tamil Nadu Dr Ambedkar Law University, MGR Medical University, and Tamil Nadu Fisheries University.

The Supreme Court bench comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan had exercised the Court’s extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Indian Constitution to declare that the Bills were deemed to have been assented to on November 18, 2023, the date they were re-submitted to the Governor of a State after re-enactment by the State Assembly concerned.

“We are left with no other option but to exercise our inherent powers under Article 142… in view of the scant respect shown by the Governor to the decision of this Court in State of Punjab and other extraneous considerations that appear to be writ large in the discharge of his functions,” said the two-Judge Bench.

The Bench of the Supreme Court also prescribed a time limit of three months for the President of India also to give his assent to the State Bills forwarded by the Governor for consideration.