A Governor can call for a floor test any time he objectively feels a government in power has lost the confidence of the House and is on shaky ground, the Supreme Court held on Monday.
In a 68-page judgment, a Bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta concluded that a Governor can call for a trust vote if he has arrived at a prima facie opinion, based on objective material, that the incumbent State government has lost its majority in the Assembly.
“The idea underlying the trust vote is to uphold the political accountability of the elected government to the State legislature... In directing a trust vote, the Governor does not favour a particular political party. It is inevitable that the specific timing of a trust vote may tilt the balance towards the party possessing a majority at the time the trust vote is directed. All political parties are equally at risk of losing the support of their elected legislators, just as the legislators are at risk of losing the vote of the electorate. This is how the system of parliamentary governance operates,” Justice Chandrachud observed.
The intention behind a trust vote was to enable the elected representatives to determine whether the Council of Ministers commanded the confidence of the House. It was the MLAs, and not the Governor, who made the ultimate call whether a government should stay in power or not, the court reasoned.
With this, the apex court has made it clear that a Governor’s power to call for a floor test is not restricted only before the inception of a State government immediately after elections, but would continue throughout its five-year term.
The court clarified that the Governor's requirement to have a trust vote does not “short-circuit” any disqualification proceedings pending before the Speaker. It said a Governor need not wait for the Speaker's decision on the resignation of rebel MLAs before calling for a trust vote in the House.
But Governors cannot misuse their wide powers to call for a floor test to displace elected governments for political reasons, the court stressed.
“It is necessary that the Governors bear in mind that the purpose underlying the entrustment of the authority to require a trust vote is not to displace duly elected governments but to intervene with caution when the circumstances which are drawn to the attention of them indicate a loss of majority. This power is granted to the Governors to ensure that the principle of collective responsibility is maintained at all times and must be exercised with caution,” Justice Chandrachud observed, while referring to the nine-judge Bench judgment in the S.R. Bommai case.
Judicial review
Justice Chandrachud said the decision of the Governor to call for a trust vote was not immune from judicial review.
The judgment is based on the Madhya Pradesh political controversy, which led to the fall of Kamal Nath government and the return of the BJP regime under Shivraj Singh Chauhan after 22 Congress MLAs offered their resignations to the Speaker. On March 19, the Bench ordered a floor test in the House within the next 24 hours. However, Mr. Nath had resigned before the trust vote.
This judgment is a detailed version of what was pronounced in court on March 19. The core arguments raised by the Congress party was how the Governor had no authority to demand that then Mr. Nath should take a floor test on March 16 in the opening session of the Budget.
The Congress had also accused the Governor of “short-circuiting” the Speaker's power to decide on the resignation of 16 of the 22 rebel MLAs “spirited away” by the BJP to Bengaluru and their disqualification for defection, if necessary.
The court found that the Madhya Pradesh Governor did not act beyond his constitutional authority by calling for a floor test on March 16.
