DEEMED ASSENT, DENIED DOCTRINE: THE SUPREME COURT’S SELF-REVERSAL BETWEEN THE TAMIL NADU JUDGMENT AND THE 2025 PRESIDENTIAL REFERENCE

This paper evaluates the Supreme Court of India's doctrinal shift regarding gubernatorial powers under Article 200 of the Constitution, analyzing the transition from the two-judge bench decision in State of Tamil Nadu v. Governor of Tamil Nadu (April 2025) to the five-judge Constitution Bench opinion in the subsequent Presidential Reference (November 2025). It advances three primary claims: first, the Presidential Reference substantively reverses the Tamil Nadu ruling by invalidating judicially prescribed timelines, gubernatorial binding by ministerial advice under Article 200, and the doctrine of "deemed assent" under Article 142; second, although this reversal is justified on textual, historical, and precedential grounds, the Court's surviving remedy of a "limited mandamus" against prolonged inaction remains indeterminate, functionally incomplete, and leaves key procedural questions unresolved; and third, the incident illustrates a transition from strong to weak judicial review, as conceptualized in Jeremy Waldron’s constitutional framework. Employing a doctrinal, text-based methodology, the analysis highlights the paradox where the original decree granted to Tamil Nadu remains intact via the decree-doctrine distinction while future state litigants lose access to the "deemed assent" mechanism. Ultimately, the paper concludes that resolving gubernatorial delay within Indian federalism requires a formal constitutional amendment setting explicit timelines rather than sole reliance on weak judicial mandamus or executive restraint.