THE POCKET VETO IN INDIA: WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MISSED AND WHAT THE COURTS HAD TO FIX

The Indian Constitution is one of the longest and most detailed governing documents in the world, yet it contains a striking omission: it sets no time limit for the President or a Governor to act on a bill passed by the legislature. This gap gave rise to what is known as the pocket veto, where the constitutional head simply holds a bill indefinitely without signing, returning, or formally rejecting it. This paper traces how that silence in Articles 111 and 200 moved from a theoretical problem to a practical one, beginning with President Zail Singh's inaction on the Indian Post Office (Amendment) Bill in 1986 and escalating sharply in recent years as several Governors held state legislation in limbo for months and years at a stretch. The situation in Tamil Nadu, where the Governor withheld action on ten bills and was subsequently described by the Supreme Court as acting illegally, brought the issue to a head. The April 2025 ruling in that case finally settled that a pocket veto has no place in the Indian Constitution and that gubernatorial inaction is open to judicial review. The paper also looks at what remains unresolved after the Presidential Reference that followed, where the Court stepped back from some of the stronger positions taken in the Tamil Nadu judgment. The core argument is that while judicial intervention has narrowed the problem, it has not eliminated it. A constitutional amendment fixing a clear time limit is the only solution that would actually close the gap rather than just make it more difficult to exploit.