The State government found itself in a tight spot on Thursday, with the Madras High Court seeking to know why it had kept the people and the Legislative Assembly in the dark for nearly two years about the Centre having returned the two Bills it had passed, seeking exemption for the State from the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), after the President withheld his assent to them in September 2017.
Justices S. Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad raised the query while hearing a batch of public interest litigation petitions filed two years ago, seeking a direction to the government to obtain Presidential assent at the earliest to the Tamil Nadu Admission to MBBS and BDS Courses Bill and the Tamil Nadu Admission to Post Graduate Courses in Medicine and Dentistry Bill, passed unanimously by the Assembly on February 1, 2017. “I don’t think the Law Secretary of the State can feign ignorance about the return of the Bills, especially when it was he who had written to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs on October 25, 2017, seeking [to know the] reasons for the President having withheld assent. You cannot also claim that such an important issue was not taken to the notice of the Minister concerned,” the senior judge said and directed the government to answer the question by August 13.
Earlier, senior counsel R. Viduthalai, representing the PIL petitioners, contended that the President was duty-bound to disclose reasons for having withheld his assent to the Bills, so that the State legislature could rectify defects, if any, and resend the Bills for his consent. “Federalism is the bedrock of our Constitution. We cannot accept executive burial of a legislation passed unanimously by a House of elected representatives,” he argued.
However, stating that a proviso to Article 201(1) of the Constitution uses the term ‘may’ and thereby leaves it to the President to take a call on whether to send a Bill back to the legislature, the judges wondered whether a High Court could impress upon him to disclose the reasons for having withheld his assent. They also pointed out that the dictionary meaning of the word ‘withheld’ was refuse, and so it may have to be construed that he had actually refused consent.
Further, since Article 361(1) of the Constitution grants complete immunity to the President as well as Governors from being answerable to the courts for the exercise and performance of powers and duties of their office, the judges wanted the senior counsel to cite precedents, if any, during the next hearing to substantiate his argument that the President was duty-bound to assign reasons and that courts could issue a direction for disclosing the same.
Presidential assent was mandatory since the State Bills, aimed at making admissions to medical colleges in the State on the basis of Plus Two marks, were repugnant to the Indian Medical Council Act of 1956, which provided for the conduct of NEET for admissions to medical colleges across the country. However, even as the batch of PIL petitions, filed in 2017, were pending in the court, the Centre went ahead with the conduct of NEET for three consecutive years. After a long lull, when the petitions got listed before a Division Bench led by Justice Manikumar on July 5, senior Central government panel counsel A. Kumaraguru claimed that the Bills were ‘rejected’ by the President on September 18, 2017. Surprised by such a submission, the judges directed the Union Home Secretary to file an affidavit in the court, listing the sequence of events that took place for obtaining the President’s assent.
Echoes in Assembly
The submission made by the counsel in the court echoed in the Assembly, with Leader of the Opposition and DMK president M.K. Stalin accusing the government of not having disclosed the rejection of the Bills to the State for the last two years. Thereafter, when the case was listed on July 23, Raju S. Vaidya, Deputy Secretary, Union Ministry of Home Affairs, filed an affidavit listing the sequence of events.
Not satisfied with it, the judges held that only the Home Secretary should file the affidavit as directed by them on July 5. Accordingly, Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba filed his affidavit on Thursday, stating that the two Bills were received by the Centre on February 2, 2017. Subsequently, they were circulated to the Union Ministries of Law and Justice, Health and Family Welfare and Human Resource Development for obtaining their comments.
On March 31, 2017, a clarification was sought from the State government and the latter gave the clarification on April 6, 2017. Again, a doubt was raised by the Centre on May 19, 2017, and that too was clarified by the State government on May 29, 2017. Subsequently, the Centre placed the Bills for the President’s consideration on September 11, 2017, along with the reports and comments received from various Union Ministries as well as the State government.
A summary signed by then Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh was placed before President Ram Nath Kovind, who withheld his assent on September 18, 2017. The Bills were returned to the State government on September 22, 2017, and the same was acknowledged by the State government on October 25, 2017, when it wrote back to the Centre, seeking to know the reasons for withholding assent.
