The Madras High Court on Wednesday commenced final hearing on a writ petition filed by Puducherry Congress MLA K. Lakshminarayanan in 2017, challenging the clarifications issued by the Centre with respect to the powers that could be exercised by the administrator, referred to as the Lieutenant Governor, of the Union Territory.
Justice R. Mahadevan heard elaborate arguments advanced by senior counsel P. Chidambaram, representing the petitioner, and adjourned the hearing to Thursday for senior counsel V.T. Gopalan to make his submissions. Additional Solicitor General G. Rajagopalan said he would question the maintainability of the case on Friday.
Mr. Chidambaram heavily relied upon a judgment rendered by the Supreme Court in July this year wherein it was held that the Governor of Delhi was bound to act as per the aid and advice of the council of ministers and contended that the ratio laid down in the judgment would squarely apply to Puducherry too.
He said the L-G of Puducherry could not disagree either with the Chief Minister or other Ministers on every other issue, “create them into a dispute” and refer it to the President. Such disputes could be referred only in the rarest of rare instances to resolve serious issues on which the L-G disagrees with the decisions taken by the council of ministers.
Besides, the L-G, he said, could not take any decision on issues that had been referred to the President until the latter takes a call on those matters. The law empowers the L-G to take a decision on matters pending before the President only in matters which required to be dealt with very urgently and not as a matter of routine, the senior counsel said.
Claiming that the incumbent L-G Kiran Bedi was interfering in the day-to-day administration of the elected government and not allowing it to function effectively, Mr. Chidambaram said: “It does not behove of a Lieutenant Governor. It is against the Constitution. As the law is now clear in Delhi, the law must be settled in the case of Puducherry too.”
‘Acting within powers’
However, a counter-affidavit filed on behalf of Ms. Bedi, through Central Government Standing Council V. Venkatesan, denied all the allegations. She contended that she had been functioning strictly under the powers conferred on her under the Government of Union Territories Act of 1963 and at no stage had any challenge been thrown to the elected government.
“Pertinently, the council of ministers had passed 236 cabinet resolutions in the past two years. Of these, the Administrator had difference of opinion in only two matters — one relating to loan waiver for a segment of farmers and the other on appointing MLAs as chairpersons of corporations/societies,” it said.
Except these two issues, every other decision of the council of ministers had received the assent of the Administrator. “To be precise, 99.16% of the decisions had been approved; it was just two decisions on which the Administrator had a different opinion and she referred them to the Central government as envisaged under Section 44 of the Act,” it added.
The court was told that the L-G always wanted to work in tandem with the elected representatives but it was they who stayed away on their own more out of political compulsions. It was also claimed that the writ petitioner’s intention was to keep the L-G as a “rubber stamp authority.”
