Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan on Thursday, 19 January, said that the act of the state government to move the Supreme Court against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, without informing him, was “improper.”
Khan, while speaking to reporters at the airport of Thiruvananthapuram, said that protocol demanded that he should have been informed first.
“Even the rules of the Assembly provide that the legislature shall not discuss any subject which does not come under their constitutional jurisdiction. I have no problem if they go to the Supreme Court. Even there I feel, without informing the constitutional head of the state, what they have done is improper,” Khan added.
‘Problem Not With the Plea’
The governor further went on to say that, “Yet, I do not find anything wrong with it. I do not find any fault with their decision to go to Supreme Court, why because, Constitution gives that authority to the Supreme Court. But the protocol demanded that they should have told me first.”
Pointing out that there is a legal maxim, he said that no one is above the law.
“Clearly, I am not against anyone approaching the Judiciary. But, with me being the Constitutional head of the state, they (the state government) should have informed me about it, but I came to know through the newspapers. Some people here, think they are above law,”Arif Mohammad Khan, Kerala Governor
The Kerala government had on 13 January filed a petition in the apex court, saying the CAA was contradictory to the constitutional ethos.
In the petition, the state government has stated the Act violates "Articles 14, 21 and 25 of the Indian Constitution" and is violative of the basic structure – the principle of secularism.
Khan, who has been at loggerheads with the Left government over various issues since the past few days, also made it clear he was not a “rubber stamp.”
The remarks were made by Khan a day after a section of the media reported he had allegedly refused to sign the ordinance on the Local Self Government ward re-organisation, which had recently received the cabinet nod.
“I have to apply my mind. I have to take my time. The file is with me. I will take some time to make up my mind on what to do about it,” he told reporters at the airport.
Khan had not signed the ordinance with respect to the amendments to Kerala Panchayat Raj Act 1994 to increase the number of constituencies in Local Self Governments.
(With inputs from PTI, IANS, ANI)
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