The Governor and the State Executive

Every Indian state is governed by a Chief Minister the voters chose and headed by a Governor they did not. The Constitution gives that appointed head almost no independent power on paper and a decisive sliver of it in the gaps — who is called to form a government, when a house is tested, which bill becomes law, and when a state loses its government altogether. That distance is the largest single source of friction in Indian federalism.

Why a parliamentary state needs a head who does not govern

India transplanted the Westminster model downward as well as upward: the same dual executive that gives the Union a President and a Prime Minister gives every state a Governor and a Chief Minister. The reasoning is structural rather than sentimental — a system in which the real executive can fall on any afternoon needs a head who cannot.

• Continuity of the state through discontinuity of government. A ministry in a parliamentary system holds office only while it commands the assembly, so its life is inherently precarious.
  • A head with a fixed term keeps the state a continuing legal person while ministries come and go — orders are issued, appointments made and the machinery of administration authenticated in a name that survives a defeat on the floor.
  • Someone must exist to receive a resignation and appoint a successor; a system cannot have the outgoing government decide who follows it.
• Neutrality above party. The Chief Minister is by definition the leader of a party or coalition, and cannot simultaneously personify the state as a whole.
  • The nominal head embodies the state, not the majority within it — receiving dignitaries, addressing the legislature, exercising clemency.
  • The distinction is between the office of state and the government of the day, and it is precisely this distinction that collapses when a Governor is seen as a partisan.
• Federal linkage. The Governor was additionally designed as the point where the Union’s presence at the state level is institutionalised, which no purely ceremonial office needs to be.
• The colonial inheritance. The Government of India Act 1935 had already made the provincial Governor an agent of the Crown with special responsibilities and overriding powers, and the framers borrowed the shell of that office while relocating its loyalty.

The Constituent Assembly’s mood: apprehension, not confidence

Paul Brass offers the sharpest corrective to the standard reading of the founding moment. Where Nehru’s rhetoric projected optimism about a self-confident new republic, Brass argues that the Constitution was in fact framed in an atmosphere of fear and trepidation — partition had just happened, princely states were being integrated under duress, communal violence was live, and secessionist possibilities were being counted rather than dismissed.

• The Governor’s appointment was decided in that atmosphere. The Draft Constitution had originally contemplated a directly elected Governor; the Assembly abandoned that in favour of central nomination.
  • An elected Governor would have carried a popular mandate of his own, creating a rival centre of authority against the Chief Minister within the same state.
  • It would also, the framers feared, give a regional or secessionist movement a constitutional head of its own to rally around.
  • Nomination by the Union was thus not an oversight but a deliberate centralising choice, adopted for reasons of national integration.
• The consequence was structural. By making the head of state a central appointee removable at the centre’s pleasure, the Assembly built an instrument of Union influence into the state executive itself.
• Every subsequent controversy traces to that decision. The office is asked to be simultaneously the impartial head of a state and the trusted nominee of a government the state may have voted against.

The office of Governor is not controversial because it was badly drafted; it is controversial because it was deliberately designed to be an instrument of the Union inside the state.

The constitutional architecture: Articles 153 to 167

Part VI of the Constitution reproduces the Union executive in miniature. Articles 153 to 167 set out the whole apparatus of the state executive — Governor, Chief Minister, council of ministers and Advocate General — and the striking feature of the text is how little of it is about the Governor’s powers and how much about his position.

The office and the vesting of executive power

• Article 153 provides that there shall be a Governor for each state.
  • The Seventh Amendment (1956) added a proviso allowing the same person to be Governor of two or more states, a device now used routinely for smaller and north-eastern states.
• Article 154 vests the executive power of the state in the Governor, exercisable by him directly or through officers subordinate to him in accordance with the Constitution.
  • This is a formal vesting, not a personal one — the identical formula in Article 53 for the President has never been read as conferring real personal power.
  • The executive power of a state is co-extensive with its legislative power under the State and Concurrent Lists, subject to the Union’s superior competence.

Appointment, tenure and the thinness of the qualifications

• Article 155: the Governor is appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal — which, in a parliamentary system, means appointed by the Union council of ministers, and in practice by the Prime Minister.
  • There is no election, no confirmation hearing and no state involvement anywhere in the text.
• Article 156: the Governor holds office during the pleasure of the President, for a term of five years from entering office, and may resign by writing to the President.
  • The five-year term is expressly subject to the pleasure clause, which means it is a maximum and not a guarantee.
  • He continues in office until a successor enters upon it, so a vacancy cannot arise by efflux of time alone.
  • There is no impeachment procedure of the kind Article 61 provides for the President — removal is by simple withdrawal of pleasure.
• Article 157 prescribes the entirety of the eligibility criteria: the person must be a citizen of India and have completed thirty-five years of age.
  • Nothing about experience, standing, domicile, political detachment or a cooling-off period appears in the Constitution.
  • This silence is not a drafting slip: the Assembly consciously left the matter to convention, on an assurance that conventions would hold.
• Article 158 sets the conditions of office.
  • The Governor may not be a member of Parliament or of a state legislature; if such a member is appointed, the seat is vacated on the date he enters office.
  • He may hold no other office of profit, is entitled to the use of official residences without rent, and to emoluments and allowances fixed by Parliament.
  • His emoluments cannot be diminished during his term, the standard guarantee of independence.
  • Where one person is Governor of two or more states, the emoluments are apportioned between them as the President determines.
• Article 159 prescribes the oath, administered by the Chief Justice of the High Court of that state, or in his absence the senior-most judge available.
  • The words are unusually specific: to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the law, and to devote himself to the service and well-being of the people of the state.
  • The oath is to the people of the state — not to the Union that appointed him, a point the Supreme Court has returned to whenever a Governor is accused of acting as a central agent.
• Article 160 empowers the President to make provision for discharge of the Governor’s functions in contingencies not provided for.
• Article 161 gives a pardoning power over offences against laws on matters within the state’s executive power — narrower than the President’s, since it excludes court-martial sentences and death sentences.

The council of ministers and the Chief Minister

• Article 163(1): there shall be a council of ministers with the Chief Minister at the head to aid and advise the Governor in the exercise of his functions, except in so far as he is required by or under the Constitution to exercise them in his discretion.
• Article 163(2): if a question arises whether a matter is one in which the Governor is required to act in his discretion, the decision of the Governor is final, and the validity of anything done by him shall not be called in question on the ground that he ought or ought not to have acted in his discretion.
• Article 163(3) makes the advice tendered by ministers non-justiciable — courts may not inquire into what advice was given.
• Article 164 governs the ministry.
  • The Chief Minister is appointed by the Governor; other ministers are appointed on the Chief Minister’s advice.
  • Ministers hold office during the Governor’s pleasure, a formula that in practice means during the Chief Minister’s pleasure.
  • Article 164(1A), inserted by the 91st Amendment (2003), caps the council at 15 per cent of the strength of the Legislative Assembly, with a minimum of twelve ministers.
  • Article 164(1B) bars a member disqualified for defection from holding ministerial office for the remainder of his term.
  • Article 164(2) makes the council collectively responsible to the Legislative Assembly — the constitutional heart of state parliamentary government.
  • Article 164(4) allows a non-member to be a minister for six consecutive months, after which he ceases unless elected.
  • A proviso to 164(1) requires a minister in charge of tribal welfare in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.
• Article 165 provides for the Advocate General, appointed by the Governor, the state’s counterpart to the Attorney General.
• Article 166 requires all executive action of the state to be expressed in the name of the Governor and authenticated as the rules provide, and empowers the Governor to make rules for the transaction of business.
• Article 167 imposes three duties on the Chief Minister towards the Governor, and they are the constitutional basis of the Governor’s right to be informed.
  • To communicate all decisions of the council of ministers relating to the administration of the state and proposals for legislation.
  • To furnish such information relating to administration and legislation as the Governor calls for.
  • To submit for the consideration of the council any matter on which a minister has taken a decision but which the council has not considered, if the Governor so requires.

Provision	Union	State
Head of state	President, indirectly elected by an electoral college	Governor, appointed by the President under Article 155
Tenure	Five years; removable only by impeachment under Article 61	Five years, but during pleasure under Article 156; no impeachment
Aid and advice	Article 74 — advice binding, one reconsideration permitted, no discretion clause	Article 163 — binding except where discretion is required, and scope of discretion is his own to decide
Qualifications	Article 58 — 35 years, qualified for election to the Lok Sabha	Article 157 — citizen, 35 years, nothing further
Assent to bills	Article 111 — assent, withhold, or return once	Article 200 — assent, withhold, return, or reserve for the President
Emergency trigger	Proclaims under Articles 352, 356, 360	Reports under Article 356; the trigger, not the decider

A constitutional head, but not the President’s twin

The most commonly examined proposition about the office is also the most commonly overstated. The Supreme Court has held that the Governor, like the President, is a constitutional head bound by ministerial advice — but the constitutional texts governing the two offices are not identical, and the difference is the whole controversy.

• Shamsher Singh v. State of Punjab (1974) settled the status question. A seven-judge bench held that the President and the Governor are equally constitutional or formal heads, and that they exercise their powers and functions only on the aid and advice of their council of ministers, save in a few well-known exceptional situations.
  • The Court rejected the argument that vesting language in Articles 53 and 154 confers personal executive power.
  • Ram Jawaya Kapur v. State of Punjab (1955) had already described the Indian head of state as a formal or constitutional head with the real executive being the council of ministers.
• The textual asymmetry survives Shamsher Singh. Article 74 contains no discretion clause at all; Article 163 does.
  • Article 74, as amended by the 42nd and 44th Amendments, makes the President bound by advice, with a single power to require reconsideration, after which he shall act in accordance with the advice tendered.
  • Article 163 carves out an express category of functions to be exercised in the Governor’s discretion, and there is no equivalent carve-out anywhere in Article 74.
  • Treating the two offices as exact counterparts is therefore an error: the Governor has a category of independent action the President simply does not have.
• Article 163(2) makes the Governor the judge of his own jurisdiction. He decides not merely how to exercise discretion but whether a matter is discretionary at all, and that decision is declared final.
  • Read literally, this is a self-certifying power — the officeholder defines the boundary of his own authority.
  • It is the single provision that converts a ceremonial office into a potentially decisive one in a hung house or a defection crisis.
• Nabam Rebia v. Deputy Speaker (2016) cut that reading down. A Constitution Bench held that the exercise of discretion is not beyond the scope of judicial review, and that a court may inquire whether the Governor acted with mala fides or on extraneous considerations.
  • The Court quashed the Arunachal Pradesh Governor’s decision to advance the assembly session and to issue messages under Article 175(2) on the order of business, holding these were taken without and against ministerial advice.
  • The judgment described the Governor’s discretionary area as narrow and exceptional, and warned that he cannot be an all-pervading super-constitutional authority.
  • It restored the dismissed ministry of Nabam Tuki — the first time the Supreme Court had reinstated a state government displaced through the Governor’s office.
• Article 361 provides the immunity that complicates enforcement.
  • The President and Governors are not answerable to any court for the exercise and performance of the powers and duties of their office, or for any act done in that purported exercise.
  • No criminal proceedings may be instituted or continued against them during their term, and no civil proceedings without two months’ notice.
  • Rameshwar Prasad v. Union of India (2006) clarified the limit: the immunity is personal to the officeholder, and does not bar a court from examining whether the action itself was unconstitutional or actuated by mala fides.
• Punchhi Commission framed the underlying principle: discretion does not by itself dilute the rule of law, since some circumstances genuinely require judgement, but the area of discretion is limited, and within it the choice must be dictated by reason, tempered by caution and exercised in good faith rather than arbitrarily.

The dual role: head of state and channel of the Union

The Governor holds two mandates that pull in opposite directions. As head of the state executive he is bound to the elected ministry; as the Union’s nominee he is the point at which central information, central priorities and central intervention enter the state.

• The Sarkaria Commission called the Governor the “lynchpin” of the constitutional machinery between the Union and the states, and the metaphor is exact — a lynchpin holds a wheel to an axle and is useless in itself.
• India did not adopt dual federalism. Unlike the American arrangement of two largely self-contained governments, the Indian scheme interlocks the two levels — shared services, shared lists, shared revenues, shared personnel.
  • Cooperative federalism presupposes a channel of communication between governments that are not independent of one another.
  • The Governor is the institutional form of that channel, positioned inside the state but appointed from outside it.
• Bridge-building runs in both directions, at least in design.
  • Upward, he communicates the state’s aspirations, grievances and conditions to the Union.
  • Downward, he brings a national perspective to bear on state decisions — an argument with real force in matters of internal security, border management and communal peace.
  • This is the sense in which he is described as the “eyes and ears” of the Union in the state.
• In practice the channel has become a lever. Where the Union and the state are governed by rival parties, the same office that was to enable cooperation becomes the instrument of pressure.
  • Cooperative federalism converts into bargaining federalism: the state’s routine business — assent, appointments, session dates, university headships — becomes negotiable currency.
  • The Governor is then described, more accurately than kindly, as the long arm of the Union, an iron fist in a velvet glove.
• Seema Chishti’s criticism goes further, treating the office in its present working as a vestige of the colonial past that a mature federal democracy should not be reproducing.

The discretionary domain, area by area

Discretion here means a decision a constitutional functionary must take on his own reason and responsibility, without binding advice. Constitutional discretion is where the text expressly says so; situational discretion arises where there is no ministry whose advice could be taken, or where the ministry’s advice would be self-serving.

Type	Basis	Examples
Constitutional discretion	Text expressly requires the Governor to act in his discretion	Reservation of bills under Articles 200 and 201; special responsibilities in the Sixth Schedule states and under Article 371A; functions as administrator of a Union Territory
Situational discretion	No valid advice is available or the advice cannot be trusted	Appointing a Chief Minister in a hung assembly; dismissing a ministry that has lost confidence; recommending Article 356; dissolving a house on the advice of a defeated ministry
Not discretion at all	Ordinary executive functions	Appointments, ordinances, summoning, prorogation, addresses — all on ministerial advice

Appointing a Chief Minister in a hung assembly

• Where one party has a clear majority, the Governor has no choice at all — he must call its elected leader.
• Where no party has a majority, the Governor chooses whom to call first, and that choice frequently decides who governs, because the first mover has the machinery of office and the time to accumulate defectors.
• The Sarkaria Commission’s order of preference is the closest thing to a rule, and it is guidance rather than law.
  • First, an alliance formed before the elections that commands a majority.
  • Second, the largest single party staking a claim with the support of others, including independents.
  • Third, a post-electoral coalition in which all partners join the government.
  • Fourth, a post-electoral alliance in which some parties join the government and others support it from outside.
• The Punchhi Commission endorsed the sequence and added that the Governor should insist on a written claim of support and should not go behind the numbers presented on paper.
• The floor of the house is the only legitimate test. Wherever the claim is contested, the Governor’s function is to convene the assembly quickly, not to adjudicate the claim in Raj Bhavan.

Dismissal of a ministry and the floor test

• A ministry that has demonstrably lost the confidence of the assembly and refuses to face it may be dismissed, and this is genuine situational discretion because the advice of such a ministry cannot bind.
• The test is arithmetical and public. After S.R. Bommai, the question of majority is to be settled by a floor test in the assembly, not by the Governor’s assessment of letters, affidavits or parades of legislators.
• The Governor’s assessment of “horse-trading” is not a substitute for the vote, however plausible — the assembly’s verdict may be corrupt, but it is the assembly’s to give.
• Timing is the residual discretion that still bites. How soon a floor test is called, and whether it is called at all, remains within the Governor’s control and has repeatedly decided outcomes.

Sessions, dissolution, prorogation and messages

• Article 174 requires the Governor to summon the house at such time and place as he thinks fit, with no more than six months between the last sitting of one session and the first of the next, and empowers him to prorogue the house and dissolve the assembly.
  • These are normally exercised on ministerial advice; the exception is dissolution advised by a ministry that no longer commands the house.
  • Prorogation ends a session; dissolution ends the life of the assembly and forces an election.
• Article 175 gives the Governor the right to address the assembly and to send messages to the house, whether on a pending bill or otherwise, and requires the house to consider such a message with all convenient despatch.
  • Nabam Rebia held that the message power cannot be used to direct the house’s order of business or to engineer the removal of a Speaker.
• Article 176 requires a special address by the Governor at the first session after each general election and at the first session of each year, setting out the government’s programme — a speech written by the ministry, which is why refusals to read portions of it have themselves become episodes of confrontation.

Assent and reservation: Articles 200 and 201

• Article 200 gives the Governor four courses when a bill passed by the state legislature is presented to him.
  • Assent to the bill, at which point it becomes law.
  • Withhold assent, the option whose meaning has generated the entire modern controversy.
  • Return the bill — if it is not a money bill — with a message requesting reconsideration of the bill or specified provisions or amendments, as soon as possible; if the house passes it again, with or without amendment, the Governor shall not withhold assent.
  • Reserve the bill for the consideration of the President.
• The second proviso is mandatory: a bill that would derogate from the powers of the High Court so as to endanger the position that court is designed to fill must be reserved.
• Article 201 governs what happens next. The President may assent or withhold assent; he may direct the Governor to return a non-money bill to the house for reconsideration within six months; and even if the house passes it again, the President is not bound to assent.
• The text prescribes no time limit anywhere in either article — the omission that made indefinite retention possible and turned Article 200 into the live constitutional question of the decade.

Recommending President’s Rule under Article 356

• The Governor’s report is the ordinary trigger. Article 356 permits a proclamation on receipt of a report from the Governor of a state, or otherwise, if the President is satisfied that the government of the state cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.
• The Governor neither imposes nor lifts President’s Rule — he supplies the factual foundation on which the Union acts, and during the proclamation he becomes the agent through whom the President administers the state.
• This is where the office’s dual character is most visible: the head of the state executive supplies the case for that executive’s suspension.

Special responsibilities and the tribal areas

• Sixth Schedule states. In Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, the Governor exercises a range of functions relating to autonomous district and regional councils — constituting them, determining their boundaries, assenting to their legislation and, in specified matters, acting in his discretion.
• Article 371A gives the Governor of Nagaland a special responsibility with respect to law and order so long as internal disturbances continue, and in discharging it he acts in his individual judgement after consulting the council of ministers, with the President’s decision final on whether the responsibility applies.
• Article 371H gives the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh a comparable special responsibility for law and order; Article 371C gives the Governor of Manipur responsibilities regarding the hill areas committee; Article 371F carries special provisions for Sikkim.
• Article 371 requires the Governors of Maharashtra and Gujarat to discharge special responsibilities for development boards for regions such as Vidarbha, Marathwada, Saurashtra and Kutch.
• These are the clearest cases of genuine constitutional discretion, and notably they are also the least litigated — because they concern administration in disturbed or under-developed regions rather than the survival of governments.

Chancellor of state universities

• This role is statutory, not constitutional. Most state university Acts make the Governor ex officio Chancellor, with powers over the appointment of Vice-Chancellors, search committees and sometimes the appointment of members to university bodies.
• The office was given to the Governor precisely because it was assumed to be non-partisan — an academic appointment insulated from the ministry of the day.
• In practice it has become a second front of confrontation, with Governors and state governments in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Punjab deadlocked over Vice-Chancellor appointments and over legislation transferring the Chancellorship to the Chief Minister or a nominated academic.
  • The Supreme Court has had to intervene repeatedly, including by supervising a search committee process for West Bengal’s universities and by pressing the Kerala Governor and Chief Minister to reach consensus, with the Court indicating it would appoint Vice-Chancellors itself if they could not.
• The Punchhi Commission recommended removing the burden altogether, arguing that the Governor should not be saddled with the Chancellorship or with any statutory role that draws him into day-to-day state administration.

Administrator of a Union Territory

• Article 239(2) allows the President to appoint the Governor of a state as the administrator of an adjoining Union Territory.
• In that capacity he acts independently of his state council of ministers, and the arrangement is expressly one of the situations in which the Governor functions in his own right.
• The office is thereby doubled: the same person is a bound constitutional head in one jurisdiction and a functioning executive in another.

The ordinance power under Article 213

• Article 213 allows the Governor to promulgate ordinances when the legislature is not in session and he is satisfied that circumstances require immediate action.
  • An ordinance has the same force and effect as an Act of the state legislature.
  • It must be laid before the legislature when it reassembles and ceases to operate six weeks from reassembly, or earlier if a resolution disapproving it is passed.
  • It is exercised on ministerial advice, not in discretion — the “satisfaction” is that of the council of ministers.
• The Governor must obtain the President’s instructions in three situations: where a bill containing the same provisions would have required the President’s previous sanction for introduction, where the Governor would have thought it necessary to reserve such a bill for the President, and where an Act with the same provisions would have been invalid without the President’s assent.
• D.C. Wadhwa v. State of Bihar (1987) confronted a state that had turned the emergency power into a mode of ordinary legislation.
  • Bihar had promulgated and re-promulgated hundreds of ordinances over more than a decade, some kept alive for years without ever being placed before the legislature for enactment.
  • The Supreme Court held that re-promulgation to bypass the legislature is a fraud on the Constitution and a colourable exercise of power, because the power exists to meet an emergency and not to substitute for law-making.
  • It confirmed that the ordinance power is within the scope of judicial review, notwithstanding the subjective language of “satisfaction”.
• Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar (2017), a seven-judge bench, completed the doctrine.
  • Re-promulgation was again condemned as a fraud on the Constitution and a subversion of democratic legislative processes.
  • The Court held that an ordinance which lapses does not create enduring rights as an enacted law would, and that the failure to lay it before the house is itself a constitutional violation.

The record: seventy years of contested Raj Bhavans

The gap between design and practice is not an accusation to be argued; it is a sequence of episodes, and the sequence is bipartisan. Every party that has held power at the Union has used the office against governments it did not control, and every party has denounced the practice from opposition.

The first decades

• Madras, 1952. After the first general election the communist-led bloc emerged with the larger number of seats in the Madras assembly, but Governor Sri Prakasa invited C. Rajagopalachari of the Congress — who was not even a member of the legislature — to form the government.
  • The precedent set at the very first opportunity was that the Governor’s judgement of stability would override the arithmetic of the house.
• Kerala, 1959. The elected communist ministry of E.M.S. Namboodiripad was dismissed and the assembly dissolved through the first substantial use of Article 356 against a government that had not lost its majority.
  • The stated ground was a breakdown of law and order arising from the agitation against the government’s education and land legislation.
  • The episode established the template of using the emergency provision as an instrument of party politics, and it did so under a Prime Minister who had assured the Assembly that conventions would restrain the office.
• Andhra Pradesh, 1984. Governor Ram Lal dismissed the ministry of N.T. Rama Rao, who commanded a large majority, while the Chief Minister was abroad for heart surgery, and installed a defector, N. Bhaskara Rao.
  • Rama Rao paraded his legislators before the President; the resulting public outcry forced the Governor’s removal and the ministry’s restoration within a month.
  • The episode became the standard illustration that the floor, not the Raj Bhavan, must decide majorities — and it fed directly into the Sarkaria Commission’s terms of reference.
• Karnataka, 1989. The ministry of S.R. Bommai was dismissed after Governor P. Venkatasubbaiah reported that letters from nineteen legislators withdrawing support showed a loss of majority.
  • The Chief Minister’s offer to prove his majority on the floor was refused, and the assembly was dissolved.
  • That refusal produced the litigation that became the most consequential federalism judgment in Indian constitutional law.

After Bommai: the pattern persists

• Uttar Pradesh, 1998. Governor Romesh Bhandari dismissed Kalyan Singh overnight and installed Jagdambika Pal as Chief Minister without a floor test.
  • The Allahabad High Court restored Kalyan Singh; on appeal the Supreme Court ordered a composite floor test between the rival claimants.
  • Pal lost the vote decisively, demonstrating in a single afternoon that the Governor’s assessment had been wrong.
• Jharkhand, 2005. Governor Syed Sibte Razi invited Shibu Soren to form a government although the rival alliance produced a larger list of supporters.
  • The Supreme Court advanced and supervised the floor test; Soren resigned before facing it.
• Bihar, 2005. Governor Buta Singh recommended dissolution of a newly elected assembly that had never met, on the ground that horse-trading was being attempted to cobble together a majority.
  • Rameshwar Prasad v. Union of India (2006) held the proclamation unconstitutional — the Governor’s report was based on assumptions rather than material, and the assembly could not be dissolved on a mere apprehension of defections.
  • The Court nonetheless declined to revive the assembly, since fresh elections had already been notified, and confined itself to a declaration — an early demonstration that the remedy usually arrives too late to matter.
  • The judgment reaffirmed that the office of Governor is one of dignity, that his oath binds him to the people of the state and not to the Union government, and that Article 361 confers no absolute immunity on his actions.
• Uttarakhand, 2016. President’s Rule was imposed a day before the Chief Minister, Harish Rawat, was to prove his majority, on the strength of a media sting operation suggesting he would bribe legislators.
  • The High Court quashed the proclamation; the Supreme Court ordered a floor test, which Rawat won, and President’s Rule was revoked.
• Arunachal Pradesh, 2016. Governor J.P. Rajkhowaadvanced the assembly session by a month on his own initiative and issued messages fixing the removal of the Speaker as the first item of business.
  • Nabam Rebia quashed the entire sequence and restored the Nabam Tuki ministry, holding that these were functions to be exercised on ministerial advice and not in discretion.
• Goa and Manipur, 2017. In both states the Governor passed over the single largest party in favour of a smaller party that produced a post-poll combination.
  • In Goa, the Congress won 17 seats to the BJP’s 13, and the BJP was invited to form the government.
  • In Manipur, the Congress won 28 seats to the BJP’s 21, and the BJP was invited.
  • Both choices were defensible under the Sarkaria sequence if the larger party could not demonstrate support — which is exactly why a sequence without a time-bound floor test resolves nothing.
• Karnataka, 2018. Governor Vajubhai Vala invited the BJP, the largest single party, and gave it fifteen days to prove its majority.
  • The Supreme Court compressed the period to a single day; the ministry resigned before the vote.
  • The judicial insistence that a floor test be immediate is the most practically effective constraint yet developed on this discretion.
• Karnataka, 2019. A wave of resignations by ruling-coalition legislators brought the government down; the litigation that followed turned on the Speaker’s power over resignations and disqualifications, showing how defection management and gubernatorial discretion now operate as a single mechanism.
• Maharashtra, 2019. After weeks of deadlock, President’s Rule was revoked before dawn and Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in with Ajit Pawar at an unannounced early-morning ceremony.
  • The Supreme Court ordered an open floor test within twenty-four hours, conducted by a pro tem Speaker and televised live; the government resigned before the vote.

Maharashtra 2022 and the 2023 judgment

The Maharashtra crisis of 2022 is the most instructive modern episode because the Supreme Court, unusually, pronounced on the Governor’s conduct in terms and still could give no remedy.

• Around forty legislators of the ruling Shiv Sena withdrew support from the coalition led by Uddhav Thackeray and decamped, while proceedings on their disqualification were pending before the Deputy Speaker.
• The Governor called a floor test on the basis of the rebels’ communications and letters from opposition legislators; Thackeray resigned without facing the vote, and Eknath Shinde was sworn in.
• Subhash Desai v. Principal Secretary, Governor of Maharashtra (2023), a Constitution Bench, held that the Governor’s decision was not justified in law.
  • There was no objective material before him to conclude that the incumbent ministry had lost the confidence of the house — resolutions of intra-party discontent are not the same as a loss of confidence in the government.
  • The Court held that a Governor must not enter the political arena or lend his office to the resolution of an internal party dispute, and that discontent within a party is to be settled within the party or in the house, not in Raj Bhavan.
  • It also held that the Governor was not justified in inviting Shinde on the basis he did, but that Thackeray could not be reinstated because he had resigned without facing the floor test — the Court cannot restore a government that gave up voluntarily.
  • The bench additionally referred the correctness of Nabam Rebia’s holding on a Speaker facing a removal notice to a larger bench of seven judges, leaving a significant question about defection adjudication open.
• The outcome is the lesson. A finding that the Governor acted illegally arrived eleven months after the government it displaced had gone, and changed nothing.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly established that the Governor acted unconstitutionally, and almost as repeatedly found that nothing can be done about it.

The assent standoffs

• Punjab, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Telangana and Jharkhand have all seen bills passed by their legislatures held in Raj Bhavan without decision for periods running into years.
• The refusal to act became the preferred instrument precisely because inaction is invisible, unappealable and, until recently, unlitigated — there is no order to challenge when nothing has been done.
• Kerala additionally challenged the President’s withholding of assent to bills its Governor had reserved, taking the dispute one level higher than the Governor’s office.
• The subject matter was rarely trivial: university governance and the Chancellorship, reservation and appointment legislation, and in Tamil Nadu’s case a set of bills the assembly had passed twice.

Article 356 in depth

• The text. If the President, on receipt of a report from the Governor or otherwise, is satisfied that a situation has arisen in which the government of the state cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, he may by proclamation assume to himself all or any of the functions of the state government and declare that the powers of the state legislature shall be exercisable by or under the authority of Parliament.
  • The President may not assume the powers of the High Courts — the judicial branch is expressly excluded.
  • Every proclamation must be laid before both Houses and ceases after two months unless approved; approval extends it to six months, renewable to a maximum of three years, with the additional conditions imposed by the 44th Amendment beyond one year.
  • Article 365 supplies a parallel route: failure of a state to comply with directions of the Union may be treated as a situation in which the state’s government cannot be carried on constitutionally.
• The record of use before Bommai was extraordinary. The power was invoked well over a hundred times between 1950 and 1994, in a large proportion of cases against governments run by parties in opposition at the Union.
  • The grounds included loss of majority, breakdown of law and order, corruption, political instability and, on occasion, the mere change of government at the Union.
  • The most systematic episodes came in 1977 and 1980, when incoming Union governments dismissed batches of state governments run by their opponents on the argument that those governments had lost the people’s mandate.
• Ambedkar’s hope has become the most-quoted line on the provision. Defending it in the Constituent Assembly, he expressed the wish that such articles would never be called into operation and would remain a dead letter.

“I hope the first thing he will do would be to issue a mere warning to a province that has erred… I hope that such articles will never be called into operation and that they would remain a dead letter.” — B.R. Ambedkar

• The Sarkaria Commission treated Article 356 as a power of last resort.
  • It should be used very sparingly, only where all alternative courses have failed to prevent or rectify a breakdown.
  • A warning should ordinarily be issued to the state before the proclamation.
  • The Governor’s report should be a speaking document, setting out the material relied on, and it should be given wide publicity.
  • A ministry should not be dismissed without being given an opportunity to prove its majority on the floor.
• The Punchhi Commission added the proposal of a localised emergency — allowing the Union to act in a district or part of a state for a limited period, rather than dissolving an entire elected government to address a localised breakdown, so that the constitutional response is proportionate to the failure.
• S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994) is the decisive intervention, delivered by a nine-judge bench.
  • Proclamations under Article 356 are justiciable. The President’s satisfaction is subjective, but the courts may examine whether it rests on relevant material and whether the exercise was mala fide or based on wholly extraneous considerations.
  • The test of majority is the floor of the house. The Governor’s personal assessment, letters of withdrawal and parades of legislators are constitutionally irrelevant.
  • The assembly may not be dissolved until both Houses of Parliament have approved the proclamation; until then it may only be kept in suspended animation, so that a wrongful dissolution cannot be presented to a court as an accomplished fact.
  • The Court can restore a dismissed government and revive a dissolved assembly if the proclamation is struck down.
  • Federalism is a basic feature of the Constitution, and states are not mere appendages of the Union.
  • Secularism is also a basic feature, and a state government acting against secular principles may furnish valid ground for a proclamation — the holding that sustained the dismissals following the Babri Masjid demolition.
• The effect was immediate and lasting. Recourse to Article 356 fell sharply after 1994, and the character of disputes shifted from dismissal of governments to manipulation around government formation and, more recently, to obstruction of legislation.
• The provision has not fallen out of use. President’s Rule was imposed in Manipur on 13 February 2025, following the resignation of the Chief Minister amid prolonged ethnic conflict, with the assembly placed in suspended animation in accordance with Bommai; it was revoked on 4 February 2026, when a new Chief Minister was sworn in and the same assembly resumed.
  • This episode is the constitutionally orthodox use of the power — a genuine failure of governance, an assembly preserved rather than dissolved, and a restoration of elected government within the proclamation’s life.

The assent controversy, 2023 to 2026

The most important constitutional development concerning the office in fifty years happened in three stages across three years, and the third stage substantially undid the second. Getting the sequence right matters, because the position as it stands in 2026 is not the position most commentary from early 2025 describes.

State of Punjab v. Principal Secretary to the Governor (2023)

• The Governor of Punjab had withheld action on bills and had additionally questioned the validity of an extended budget session in which some were passed.
• The Supreme Court held that the Governor cannot effectively veto legislation by doing nothing. The expression “as soon as possible” in the first proviso to Article 200 carries constitutional force and imposes a real obligation to act.
• A Governor who withholds assent must return the bill to the legislature with a message; he cannot simply keep it.
• If the house passes it again, he is bound to assent — the elected legislature, not the appointed head, has the last word.
• The Court framed the principle broadly: the Governor, as an unelected head of state, cannot be permitted to thwart the normal course of law-making by an elected legislature.

State of Tamil Nadu v. Governor of Tamil Nadu (April 2025)

• Ten bills, several passed twice by the assembly, had lain with the Governor for periods running to years, after which he reserved them for the President.
• A two-judge bench held on 8 April 2025 that the Governor’s conduct was illegal and erroneous and lacking in bona fides.
• The Court held that there is no pocket veto: the Governor may not exercise an absolute veto and may not indefinitely retain a bill.
• He may not first return a bill and then, when it is passed again, reserve it for the President — reservation is available on the first presentation, not as a second bite.
• The President, under Article 201, may not withhold assent to a state bill without a constitutionally sanctioned reason.
• The Court prescribed specific timelines for both the Governor and the President — a period of one month where assent is withheld on ministerial advice, three months for reservation against advice, and three months for the President under Article 201.
• Invoking Article 142 to do complete justice, it declared the ten bills deemed to have been assented to on the date they were re-presented, making them law without the Governor’s signature.

The Presidential Reference and the opinion of November 2025

• The President made a Reference under Article 143(1) on 13 May 2025, placing fourteen questions about Articles 200 and 201 before the Supreme Court — in substance asking whether the April judgment had correctly stated the law.
• A five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai delivered its opinion on 20 November 2025, and it went against the Tamil Nadu reasoning on the central points.
  • Courts cannot prescribe timelines for the Governor or the President to act under Articles 200 and 201. The Constitution deliberately preserves elasticity, and imposing deadlines where the text prescribes none is contrary to it.
  • There is no doctrine of “deemed assent”. A bill cannot become law without the Governor’s actual assent, and Article 142 does not authorise the Court to supply it — to do so would be a judicial takeover of an executive function.
  • The substance of the discretion is not justiciable. Courts may not review the merits of a decision to assent, withhold or reserve, nor adjudicate the contents of a bill before it becomes law.
  • Withholding assent is not a free-standing veto. The first proviso qualifies the power to withhold: except for money bills, withholding must be accompanied by the return of the bill with a message, so a pure pocket veto remains impermissible.
  • Indefinite delay is still not allowed. Where inaction is prolonged, unexplained and indefinite, a court may issue a limited mandamus directing the Governor or the President to take a decision within a reasonable period — but it may not direct which decision.
  • Article 361 protects the individual, not the office from all scrutiny — personal immunity does not immunise prolonged institutional inaction from a direction to decide.
  • Two of the fourteen questions were left unanswered, including the question on the bench strength required under Article 145(3).
• The status of the April 2025 judgment is the point most often stated wrongly. The advisory opinion displaced its legal propositions on timelines, deemed assent and reviewability, describing those conclusions as erroneous and at variance with earlier decisions — but an advisory opinion cannot vacate the operative relief in a decided case.
  • The ten Tamil Nadu bills therefore remain law, while the reasoning that made them law no longer stands.
• The criticism of the Reference itself is substantial. Opposition state governments argued that Article 143 was being used as an appeal or review in disguise, allowing the losing party to have inconvenient reasoning reconsidered without any of the constraints of an appeal.
  • Commentators have made the sharper structural point that separating a judgment’s relief from its reasoning misunderstands what constitutional adjudication is for — a constitutional judgment lays down rules for future governance, not merely a private remedy.
• The practical consequence is a remedy without a clock. A state whose bills are held indefinitely may now seek a direction to decide, but there is no enforceable outer limit, and a Governor who supplies any explanation for delay largely escapes the limited mandamus.

Question	April 2025 (Tamil Nadu)	November 2025 (Presidential Reference)
Judicial timelines	Prescribed — one and three months for the Governor, three for the President	Impermissible; the Constitution deliberately leaves elasticity
Deemed assent	Granted under Article 142 for ten bills	No such concept; Article 142 cannot supply assent
Reviewability of the decision	Substantive review of bona fides available	Merits not justiciable; only limited mandamus for indefinite inaction
Pocket veto	Impermissible	Still impermissible — withholding must be accompanied by return
Return then reserve	Not permitted	Reservation confined to the scheme of Article 200
Effect on the ten bills	Deemed assented and law	Relief untouched; the reasoning behind it displaced

Gautam Bhatia’s assessment

• Bhatia’s diagnosis of the underlying problem is that the Constituent Assembly under-wrote the Governor’s provisions, leaving the working of the office to conventions and to good faith rather than to enforceable text.
• Good faith failed, and failed systematically, so a correction was necessary and the Court supplied one.
• But by prescribing timelines the Court crossed its own mandate, gathering to itself a power the Constitution did not give it — a solution that is not sustainable in the long term because it depends on continuing judicial supervision of a political relationship.
• The judgment was therefore a band-aid, and what is actually required is an urgent public discussion of the Constitution’s outdated provisions, beginning with the office of Governor.
• The November 2025 opinion is, in an ironic sense, a vindication of the critique: the Court withdrew the band-aid, and the underlying wound — a constitutional text with no time limits and no accountability mechanism — is exactly where it was.

Removal, security of tenure and the pleasure doctrine

• The Governor has no security of tenure at all. Article 156 makes the five-year term expressly subject to the President’s pleasure, which in a parliamentary system means the pleasure of the Union council of ministers.
• This is the mechanism that makes central influence effective. A functionary who can be removed at will by the government whose interests he is asked to weigh cannot be structurally independent of it, however honourable he personally is.
• Wholesale removals on a change of government at the Union have occurred repeatedly, and the practice of treating gubernatorial appointments as expiring with the government that made them is now largely settled by usage.
• B.P. Singhal v. Union of India (2010) is the authoritative statement, and it cuts both ways.
  • The pleasure doctrine is upheld. The President may remove a Governor at any time without assigning any reason and without granting an opportunity to be heard — Article 156 contains no limitation of that kind.
  • The power need not be exercised only for proven misconduct; the Union retains the discretion to decide that a change is necessary.
  • But the power is not absolute or unfettered. It must be exercised for valid and compelling reasons — arbitrary, capricious, whimsical or mala fide removal is impermissible.
  • A difference of ideology or political affiliation is not a valid ground. A Governor cannot be removed merely because he is not “in sync” with the policies or ideology of the incoming Union government, or because the government has lost confidence in him for that reason alone.
  • Governors should ordinarily be allowed to complete their terms, and a change of government at the Union is not by itself a reason to remove them.
  • The decision is subject to judicial review, though on a limited scale — a court will not call for the reasons as a matter of course, but if the removed Governor makes out a prima facie case of arbitrariness or mala fides, the Union may be required to produce the material.
• The practical value of the safeguard is limited. The burden falls on a removed Governor to litigate, the remedy is slow, and the Union need never state a reason unless a prima facie case is first established.
• Hargovind Pant v. Raghukul Tilak (1979) established the office’s constitutional character in terms that remain the strongest defence of its dignity.
  • The Governor holds a high constitutional office of dignity, not a post under the Government of India.
  • He is not an employee or servant of the Union, notwithstanding that the Union appoints and can remove him — there is no relationship of subordination.
  • He is not answerable to the Union for the manner in which he discharges the functions of his office.
  • The Governor’s discretion must be the Governor’s own discretion, exercised on his own judgement, and not the Union government’s discretion exercised through him.
• The tension between the two judgments is the office’s central pathology. Hargovind Pant says the Governor is nobody’s servant; Article 156 and B.P. Singhal together say he can be dismissed tomorrow by the Union without a reason.

Appointment: constitutional silence and its consequences

The Constitution says almost nothing about who may be a Governor, and the framers were told that this would not matter.

• Article 157 requires only citizenship and the age of thirty-five. There is no requirement of eminence, of non-partisanship, of residence outside the state, or of a cooling-off period after holding political or official position.
• Thakur Das Bhargava raised precisely this objection in the Constituent Assembly, urging that specific qualifications be written into the text to prevent later misuse.
• Nehru’s answer was that conventions would suffice, and he indicated the conventions he had in mind.
  • The Governor should be an eminent person in some walk of life.
  • He should be an outsider to the state, not a local figure with local entanglements.
  • He should be detached from active politics, and in particular not a recent active politician of the ruling party at the Union.
• Every one of these conventions has been broken often enough that none of them now constrains anything.

Actual practice

• A spoils system operates in substance. Appointments function as patronage, distributed to the party’s own.
• Raj Bhavan has become a place of rehabilitation for politicians defeated at the polls, senior figures displaced from ministries, and party functionaries requiring accommodation.
  • The perverse result is that a politician the voters of a state rejected may end up as the constitutional head presiding over the Chief Minister they elected.
• Retired bureaucrats, police officers and judges have been appointed without any cooling-off period, which corrodes the perceived independence of the services and the judiciary as much as it does the office itself.
• Active politicians have been appointed and have returned to active politics afterwards, treating the office as a station on a party career rather than a term of public service.
• The consequence is a self-reinforcing loop: partisan appointment produces partisan conduct, which produces state hostility to the office, which makes an impartial appointee harder to place and less effective when placed.

The reform proposals, commission by commission

Body	On appointment	On removal and tenure
Rajamannar Committee (1969)	Prior consultation with the Chief Minister; the state’s concurrence should count	Recommended deletion of Articles 356 and 357 altogether
Sarkaria Commission (1988)	An eminent person from outside the state, detached from local politics, who has not taken too great a part in politics recently; consultation with the Chief Minister	The Governor should be allowed to complete his term and not be removed except for extremely compelling reasons
First and Second ARCs	Endorsed consultation with the Chief Minister; a person of standing not identified with the ruling party	Emphasised fixed tenure as a condition of impartiality
NCRWC (2002)	Appointment by a committee of the Prime Minister, the Union Home Minister, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chief Minister of the state	Removal only for the reasons for which appointment could be refused; not at pleasure alone
Punchhi Commission (2010)	Terms like “eminent” and “detached figure” are too vague to bind; adopt strict written guidelines; select from a panel prepared through the Inter-State Council	Delete “during the pleasure of the President” from Article 156; provide a fixed tenure of five years; remove only by a resolution of the state legislature, on an impeachment-style procedure analogous to the President’s

• The Punchhi package is the most coherent, because it addresses appointment and removal together: a panel-based, consultative appointment paired with removal that requires the consent of the state whose head he is.
  • Prepared through the Inter-State Council, the appointment would move toward what may be called an auto-pilot mode, insulating it from the Union’s immediate political calculation.
  • Punchhi further recommended that the Governor be relieved of the Chancellorship of universities and of other statutory roles that drag him into daily state administration.
• The common thread of every commission since 1969 is the same: convention has failed, and the qualifications and protections must be written down in black and white.
• None of the recommendations has been implemented. That fact is itself analytically significant — reform requires the cooperation of the very actor who benefits from the status quo, and no Union government of any party has volunteered it.

Should the office be abolished?

• The case for abolition is straightforward. The office is expensive, is not elected, adds no demonstrable value to state administration, and supplies the Union with a lever it has abused across seven decades. On the strongest version of the argument, abolishing it would be a service to Indian federalism.
• The parliamentary system makes abolition impracticable, and this is the decisive objection.
  • Some authority must appoint a Chief Minister, accept resignations, summon and dissolve the assembly, and assent to legislation — these are not optional functions.
  • Transferring them to the Chief Minister makes the head of government the certifier of his own majority; transferring them to the Speaker politicises the presiding officer further; transferring them to the High Court conscripts the judiciary into executive functions.
  • Direct election of a state head would recreate exactly the rival centre of power the Constituent Assembly rejected.
• The realistic conclusion is that the office must be reformed rather than removed, and that the reform must attack appointment and removal, which is where the dependence is created, rather than discretion, which is largely irreducible.
• Two summary judgements frame the debate.

“Governors can do great good if they are good Governors. They can do great harm if they are bad Governors.” — Soli Sorabjee

• The Punchhi Commission answered the same question institutionally: the Governor’s importance has increased with rising internal security challenges and communal conflict, which is a reason to make the office credible, not to abolish it — but discretionary powers cannot be exercised in an arbitrary manner.
• Manmohan Singh’s charge to a conference of Governors captured the ethic the office was meant to embody: that the Governor is the sole judge of what is right and wrong in the situations he faces, must act in the best interest of the country, must form his own judgement of the mandate of the Constitution, and must understand what the people expect of him.

Lieutenant Governors and the Union Territories

Union Territories are administered under a different part of the Constitution, and the officer at the head of one is not a Governor at all. The comparison matters because an LG’s powers, in the territories that have legislatures, are in important respects greater than a Governor’s.

• Article 239 provides that every Union Territory shall be administered by the President acting through an administrator appointed by him, with such designation as he specifies — Lieutenant Governor, Chief Commissioner or Administrator.
  • The administrator is not a constitutional head in the parliamentary sense; he is the President’s agent, and in territories without a legislature he is the executive.
• Article 239A enabled Parliament to create a legislature and council of ministers for Puducherry, done through the Government of Union Territories Act 1963 — a statutory, not constitutional, legislature, which Parliament may alter or abolish.
• Article 239AA, inserted by the 69th Amendment (1991), created the special constitutional arrangement for Delhi.
  • Delhi has a Legislative Assembly with power over the State and Concurrent Lists except public order, police and land.
  • The council of ministers aids and advises the Lieutenant Governor except in matters where he is required to act in his discretion.
  • The proviso to 239AA(4) allows the LG, in case of a difference of opinion with his ministers, to refer the matter to the President and to act in his discretion pending the President’s decision — a power with no counterpart in a state.
  • Article 239AB provides a President’s-Rule equivalent for Delhi, triggered by a report of the LG.
• The 2018 Constitution Bench in the Delhi case restrained the proviso sharply.
  • The LG has no independent decision-making power and is bound by the aid and advice of the council of ministers on all matters within the assembly’s competence.
  • The “difference of opinion” route is an exception, not the rule, must concern substantial issues of national or larger public interest, and may not be used mechanically on every file.
  • Delhi’s assembly has a democratically elected mandate, and the Court invoked collaborative federalism and constitutional trust to require the two authorities to work together.
• The May 2023 Delhi services judgment applied that reasoning to control over the bureaucracy.
  • A Constitution Bench held that the Government of NCT of Delhi has legislative and executive power over “services” — the civil servants who staff its administration — excluding public order, police and land.
  • Without control over officers who implement its decisions, an elected government’s accountability to the electorate becomes meaningless — the triple chain of accountability running from civil servants to ministers to the legislature to the people would be broken.
• The Union reversed the judgment within days. An Ordinance issued on 19 May 2023, later enacted as the Government of NCT of Delhi (Amendment) Act 2023, restored central control.
  • It created a National Capital Civil Service Authority — the Chief Minister, the Chief Secretary and the Principal Home Secretary — to recommend transfers and postings and disciplinary action.
  • The elected Chief Minister is in a minority of one on a body of three, and the Lieutenant Governor has the final say on its recommendations.
  • It also expanded the LG’s discretionary functions and constrained the assembly’s power over services.
• The challenge to the amending Act was referred to a Constitution Bench and remains undecided, so the legislative reversal, not the judgment it reversed, is the operative law on Delhi’s services.
• Puducherry’s arrangement is weaker still in form but calmer in practice, since its legislature is statutory; the courts have nonetheless held that the Administrator may not interfere in the day-to-day administration of an elected government.

Dimension	Governor of a state	Lieutenant Governor of Delhi
Source of office	Article 155; head of a constituent state	Article 239 / 239AA; the President’s administrator
Executive power	Vested in him under Article 154 but exercised on advice	Administers on behalf of the President; genuinely executive in the excepted fields
Aid and advice	Binding except in discretion (Article 163)	Binding except in discretion, plus the reference-to-President route under the proviso to 239AA(4)
Reserved subjects	None — the whole State List is the ministry’s	Public order, police, land are outside the assembly’s competence altogether
Control of services	With the state government	Contested; GNCTD (Amendment) Act 2023 gives the LG the final word
Reference of disagreements	No general power to refer a disagreement to the President	Express power to refer any difference of opinion and act pending decision
Removal / suspension of government	Reports for Article 356	Reports for Article 239AB

• The comparison yields a paradox that is the heart of the 2018 question. In constitutional status the Governor is far superior — he heads a constituent unit of a federation, not an appendage of the Union. In effective operational power over an elected government, the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi is stronger, because he has a reserved domain, a standing route to override his ministers, and a statutory grip on the bureaucracy that no Governor possesses.

Jammu and Kashmir since 2019

• On 5 August 2019 the Union effectively abrogated Article 370 through a Presidential Order under Article 370(3) read with Article 367, and Parliament enacted the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019.
  • The state was downgraded and divided into two Union Territories — Jammu and Kashmir with a legislature, and Ladakh without one.
  • This was the first time a full state was converted into Union Territories, and it was done while the state was under President’s Rule, so the “consent” of the state legislature was supplied by Parliament acting in its place.
• In Re Article 370 (December 2023) upheld the exercise.
  • Article 370 was a temporary provision, and the President retained the power to declare that it ceased to operate even after the Constituent Assembly of the state had dissolved.
  • Jammu and Kashmir retained no element of internal sovereignty distinct from other states after accession.
  • The Court upheld the carving out of Ladakh as a Union Territory under Article 3.
  • It declined to rule on the validity of converting the state itself into a Union Territory, recording the Solicitor General’s statement that statehood would be restored, and directed that elections to the Legislative Assembly be held by 30 September 2024.
  • It expressly directed that statehood be restored at the earliest, without fixing a date — an omission that has become the entire subsequent dispute.
• The Lieutenant Governor’s powers are unusually wide for a territory with an elected government.
  • Under the Reorganisation Act as operationalised by the Transaction of Business Rules of 2020, police, public order, All India Services and the Anti-Corruption Bureau are outside the elected government’s control and under the LG.
  • Amendments notified in 2023 and thereafter extended the LG’s role further, including over the posting and transfer of All India Service officers, the appointment of the Advocate General and law officers, and sanctions for prosecution.
  • The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Act 2023 raised the assembly’s strength and provided for the nomination of five members by the Lieutenant Governor, including two women, two Kashmiri migrants and one displaced person from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir — nominations that could in a close house affect the majority.
• Delimitation and reservation reshaped the electoral map before the election. The Delimitation Commission raised the assembly’s elected seats to ninety, with the increase weighted toward the Jammu region, and for the first time reserved seats for Scheduled Tribes alongside those for Scheduled Castes; twenty-four seats remain notionally reserved for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and are not filled.
• Assembly elections were held in September and October 2024, the first in a decade, producing a National Conference-led government under Omar Abdullah.
• The relationship between the elected government and the Lieutenant Governor has been openly adversarial.
  • The cabinet passed a resolution in October 2024 seeking immediate restoration of statehood and forwarded it to the Union.
  • Disputes have centred on transfers and postings of officers, on the elected government’s rules of business, and on the reach of the LG’s authority over the administration.
  • The Chief Minister has publicly accused the Lieutenant Governor of interfering in the functioning of the elected government.
• The statehood question remains open in 2026. The Union’s position is that statehood will be restored at an appropriate time without committing to one; petitions seeking restoration have been pressed in the Supreme Court, which has sought the Union’s response, and the state’s political leadership has taken the demand to public agitation.
• The constitutional stake is general, not local. A precedent that a full state can be reduced to a Union Territory by ordinary legislation, with restoration left to the Union’s convenience, unsettles the assumption that statehood is a stable federal status rather than a revocable grant.

The Governor’s office makes the Union’s presence felt inside a state; the Lieutenant Governor’s office makes the Union the government.

The Chief Minister and the state council of ministers

• Appointment under Article 164 follows the same convention as at the Union: the Governor appoints the leader who commands, or can command, a majority in the Legislative Assembly.
  • A person who is not a member of either house may be appointed but must secure a seat within six months under Article 164(4).
  • Other ministers are appointed on the Chief Minister’s advice and hold office during the Governor’s pleasure, which operationally means the Chief Minister’s.
• The 91st Amendment (2003) ended the practice of building loyalty through jumbo ministries.
  • The council may not exceed 15 per cent of the assembly’s strength, with a floor of twelve ministers to protect small states.
  • The corresponding cap at the Union is 15 per cent of the Lok Sabha’s strength; the state ceiling was needed because state ministries had been expanded to absorb defectors after the Tenth Schedule made group defection the only lawful route.
• Collective responsibility under Article 164(2) anchors accountability in the assembly — the ministry survives only while the house sustains it, and the loss of a confidence vote requires resignation.
• Article 167 gives the Governor his information rights, and the extent to which a Chief Minister complies with it — communicating cabinet decisions, furnishing information, referring back individual ministerial decisions — has itself become a site of confrontation in states where the two offices are at war.

The Chief Minister’s real position

Dimension	Prime Minister	Chief Minister
Legislative field	Union and Concurrent Lists, plus residuary power	State and Concurrent Lists, with Union law prevailing on the Concurrent List
Head of state above him	President, bound by Article 74, no discretion clause	Governor, with express discretion and a report power under Article 356
Fiscal position	Commands the Union budget and the borrowing power	Dependent on devolution, grants and centrally sponsored schemes; borrowing constrained under Article 293
Bureaucracy	Controls All India Service cadre policy	Administers officers of All India Services whose cadre control and disciplinary authority rest with the Union
Enforcement agencies	Union agencies answer to the Union government	Central agencies operate within the state, often against the state’s own leadership
Survival	Falls only on the floor of the Lok Sabha	Can fall on the floor, or through defection, dissolution or Article 356

• The Chief Minister is the most powerful figure within the state and structurally the weaker of the two heads of government. He is master of his own domain and a supplicant beyond it.
• Fiscal dependence is the deepest constraint. A large share of state expenditure runs through transfers, tied grants and centrally sponsored schemes whose design and conditions are set at the Union, so the state’s own priorities are shaped by another government’s fiscal choices.
• Central agencies have become an element of the political relationship, with investigation of state political leadership a recurring feature of centre-state conflict.
• Party centralisation cuts the other way from federal theory. Where a Chief Minister belongs to a nationally organised party, his tenure depends on a party high command outside the state — a discipline that no constitutional provision creates and none can remove.
  • Where he leads a state-based party, he is far more autonomous within the state and far more exposed to the Union’s institutional levers, of which the Governor is the most visible.
• Rajni Kothari’s observation about the older Congress system remains the organising insight: the balance of Indian federalism has always been set less by constitutional text than by the structure of party competition at the two levels.

Conclusion

The Governor was designed as the joint that holds a federation together and has functioned as the point at which it grinds. Nothing in the constitutional text has changed since 1950; what has changed is the political system around it — a period of one-party dominance in which the office was quietly abused, an era of coalitions in which the courts disciplined it, and a present in which the confrontation has migrated from the dismissal of governments to the obstruction of their legislation.

• The courts have closed the crudest routes and left the subtle ones open. Bommai ended dismissal without a floor test; Nabam Rebia and Subhash Desai ended manufactured sessions and floor tests without material; the 2025 opinion left indefinite delay policed only by a mandamus without a deadline.
• Judicial remedies arrive after the political fact. A government wrongly displaced is rarely restored, and a bill wrongly withheld is delayed by the length of the litigation.
• The reform agenda has been settled for over fifty years and unimplemented for as long — written qualifications, consultation with the Chief Minister, appointment from a panel through the Inter-State Council, a fixed tenure, and removal only with the state’s concurrence.
• The office cannot be abolished within a parliamentary system, so the only honest choice is between a Governor made credible by reform and a Governor whose every act is contested.
• The syllabus formula is the accurate description. The envisaged role was a neutral head and a bridge; the actual working has been a central appointee with a bridge that carries traffic in one direction.