On April 8, 2025, the Supreme Court gave an important judgement on the governors' powers. The court held that the governor has limited discretion in assenting to bills and cannot indefinitely delay and thereby exercise veto powers. More controversially, the court, invoking Article 142, gave an extraordinary order declaring that the ten pending bills, by deemed assent, have become laws without the formal assent of the constitutional head of state.

This judgement raises three consequential issues: the state of Indian federalism, the role of a nominated governor in a federal polity, and the scope of the court’s discretion under Article 142.

First, the state of Indian federalism. The Objectives Resolution envisaged that the states “shall possess and retain the status of autonomous units, together with the residuary powers”. But in the actual drafting of the Constitution, our founding fathers opted for a quasi-federal state with unitary features.

This was clearly in response to the horrors of Partition, and the imperatives of preserving the unity and integrity of the new nation-state in the face of enormous diversity and fissiparous tendencies. In a true federal polity, the constituent units are indestructible, and their boundaries can be altered only with their consent.

But Articles 2 and 3 provide for the making and unmaking of states at Parliament’s will, provided that the legislature of the affected state is allowed to express its views on the matter.

Another unitary feature is the power of the Union to impose President’s Rule (Article........

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