BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 53 of 143

Correct — D, No time limit. Article 200 is the governing provision. When a Bill passed by the State Legislature is presented to the Governor, the Governor must declare either that assent is given, or that assent is withheld, or that the Bill is reserved for the consideration of the President. The first proviso adds the fourth course: the Governor may, 'as soon as possible after the presentation to him of the Bill for assent', return the Bill — if it is not a Money Bill — with a message asking the House to reconsider it, in whole or in part, or to consider particular amendments. 'As soon as possible' is the entirety of the temporal instruction. No number of days, weeks or months appears anywhere in Article 200, so options offering one, two or three months are inventing a figure the Constitution does not contain. The only clock in this whole sequence lies in Article 201, and it binds the legislature rather than the Governor: where a Bill has been reserved for the President and the President directs it to be returned to the House, the House must reconsider it within six months of receiving the message. Two further features of the first proviso matter. The Governor's power to return is exhausted after one use, because if the House passes the Bill again, with or without amendment, and presents it once more, the Governor 'shall not withhold assent therefrom'. And a Money Bill cannot be returned at all — the Governor must either assent to it or reserve it. That combination, an open-ended clock on the first decision and a binding obligation on the second, is what makes the absence of a deadline constitutionally significant rather than a mere drafting gap.

• (a)One month — No period of one month appears in Article 200. The figure is attractive because it sounds like a reasonable administrative deadline and because one month does appear elsewhere in constitutional practice, but nothing in the Governor's assent provision fixes it.
• (b)Three months — Also absent from the constitutional text. Three months is a period a candidate may half-remember from proclamations and emergencies rather than from Article 200, and importing it here converts a deliberately open-ended provision into a fixed one.
• (c)Two months — Nowhere in Articles 200 or 201. Of the three numeric options this is the least anchored to anything in the Constitution at all — it is a filler figure placed between the other two to make the set look like a graded range of plausible deadlines.

Article 200 gives the Governor four possible responses to a Bill passed by the State Legislature: assent, withhold assent, reserve the Bill for the President, or — under the first proviso, and only for a Bill that is not a Money Bill — return it with a message seeking reconsideration. Article 201 then deals with what the President may do with a reserved Bill. Article 111 is the Union analogue, giving the President the same open-ended 'as soon as possible' language for Bills passed by Parliament. Because none of these provisions fixes an outer limit on the first decision, the head of state can in principle simply not act, a practice conventionally called the pocket veto — most famously when President Zail Singh neither assented to nor returned the Indian Post Office (Amendment) Bill of 1986. Successive commissions on Centre-State relations, including the Sarkaria Commission and later the Punchhi Commission, have recommended that a time limit be prescribed for the Governor's decision, and the recurring friction between elected State governments and Raj Bhavans over delayed Bills is a standing item in Indian federalism.

The reasoning here is negative rather than positive: you are being asked to recognise that a number does not exist. That is a distinct exam skill, and 'No time limit' or 'None of the above' options are correct far more often on constitutional-timeline questions than candidates expect, because the Constitution fixes deadlines sparingly and only where it wants to force an outcome. The way to build the discrimination is to learn the few real clocks — six months for a legislature to reconsider a Bill returned at the President's direction under Article 201, six months as the maximum life of an Ordinance under Articles 123 and 213 counted as six weeks from the reassembly of the House, six months for a Minister to secure a seat in the legislature, two months for parliamentary approval of a Financial Emergency proclamation — and then treat every other 'how long' question with the presumption that no limit exists until you can name the article that supplies one. Since this paper was set, the question of whether a court may read a timeline into Article 200 has itself been litigated: in April 2025 a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court in the Tamil Nadu Governor case prescribed outer limits for the Governor's several options, a reading immediately contested as going beyond the text, and as of mid-2026 the scope of any judicially fixed deadline remains contested. None of that alters the position the question asks about — the Constitution itself lays down no period.

• Article 200 lets the Governor assent to a Bill, withhold assent, reserve it for the President, or return it for reconsideration; the return must be made 'as soon as possible after the presentation to him of the Bill for assent', with no outer limit specified
• A Money Bill cannot be returned for reconsideration under the first proviso — the Governor must either assent to it or reserve it
• If the House passes the returned Bill again, with or without amendment, and presents it a second time, the Governor 'shall not withhold assent therefrom', so the power of return can be used only once
• The only period fixed in this sequence appears in Article 201: where the President directs a reserved Bill to be returned, the House must reconsider it within six months of receiving the message — a deadline on the legislature, not on the Governor
• Article 111 gives the President the same open-ended language for Bills of Parliament, which is how the Indian Post Office (Amendment) Bill of 1986 came to lapse unacted upon in what is conventionally called a pocket veto

• Assuming a constitutional office must have a deadline attached; the Constitution fixes periods sparingly, and 'no time limit' is frequently the correct reading
• Transferring the six-month period in Article 201 to the Governor — it binds the House reconsidering a returned Bill, not the Governor deciding on one
• Forgetting that a Money Bill cannot be returned for reconsideration at all, which changes the answer if a question specifies a Money Bill

BPSC sets constitutional timelines as bare single-fact questions with three numbers and a 'no time limit' option, so the preparation is a short list of the periods the Constitution actually fixes, held against a default presumption that it fixes none. UPSC asks the same provisions functionally instead — which of the Governor's powers are discretionary, whether assent is obligatory on a particular class of Bill, or what follows when a Bill is reserved for the President.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under Article 200 of the Constitution, which of the following Bills can the Governor NOT return to the State Legislature for reconsideration ?

  • (a)An ordinary Bill
  • (b)A Money Bill
  • (c)A Bill amending a State law on agriculture
  • (d)A Bill passed by both Houses of a bicameral State Legislature

  Answer(b) A Money Bill — the first proviso to Article 200 allows return only of a Bill that is not a Money Bill; a Money Bill must be assented to or reserved for the President.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Where a Bill is reserved for the President and the President directs that it be returned to the House, within what period must the House reconsider it ?

  • (a)Six weeks
  • (b)Three months
  • (c)Six months
  • (d)There is no fixed period

  Answer(c) Six months — Article 201 requires the House to reconsider such a Bill within six months of receiving the President's message; this is the only fixed period in the assent sequence.