Discretionary Powers of the Governor of a State in India

Abstract

By now it is well established from the provisions of the Constitution, their history, practice and interpretation that the Constitution establishes a parliamentary form of government at the levels of the union and the states in which their decisions are expressed respectively in the name of the president and the governor, while all these decisions are taken by a council of ministers headed by the prime minister in the case of the union and headed by the chief ministers in the states. Doubts have, however, persisted in view of the difference between the wordings of the relevant provisions of the Constitution—Articles 74 and 163, respectively, for the union and the states. But time and again the Supreme Court has held that in view of the parliamentary form of government at the union and in the states, the governor has no discretionary powers except the ones either expressly provided in the Constitution or that can be inferred by necessary implication. Special emphasis has been given to the constitutional scheme of democratic rule both at the union and the states along with the goal of maintaining the unity and integrity of the nation by subjecting the governor to the supervision of the union in the exercise of his discretionary powers so as to exclude every possibility for the governor to exercise any power in his personal capacity.