Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Thursday questioned the April 8 Supreme Court judgment on setting a timeline for the President and governors to decide on bills referred to them by Assemblies.
Dhankhar was speaking at the valedictory function of the 6th Rajya Sabha internship programme.
A division bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan held that Tamil Nadu governor R.N. Ravi sitting on 10 bills was illegal. The bench used its discretionary power under Article 142 to hold that the bills were deemed to have been cleared on the date they were presented to the governor after being reconsidered by the Assembly.
Dhankhar said the President was the first part of Parliament, with the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha following. “There is a direction to the President by a recent judgment. Where are we heading? What is happening in the country? We have to be extremely sensitive. We never bargained for democracy for this day — the President being called upon to decide in a time-bound manner, and if not, becomes law,” he said.
“So, we have judges who will legislate, who will perform executive functions, who will act as super Parliament and absolutely have no accountability because the law of the land does not apply to them,” Dhankhar said.
The Vice-President described Article 142, which grants plenary powers to the Supreme Court, as a “nuclear missile against democratic forces available to the judiciary 24x7”.