Five Ordinances in Eighteen Months
In February 2025 the Andhra Pradesh Cabinet approves the acquisition of 1,200 acres in a delta mandal for an industrial corridor. The parent Land Acquisition Act requires a social impact assessment and the consent of 70% of affected landowners; the Cabinet decides the urgency clause should apply. The Bill is introduced, but the House is adjourned repeatedly and it is never passed. The Governor promulgates the A.P. Land Acquisition (Special Provisions) Ordinance, 2025, dispensing with the assessment and consent. Six weeks later the House meets, but the Ordinance is not laid before it. After it lapses the Governor issues an identical Ordinance. This happens five times in eighteen months. Meanwhile possession of 900 acres has been taken, compensation paid, and a boundary wall built. A farmers' sangam petitions the High Court. The State argues that the Governor's satisfaction is final and that the Ordinance is a valid temporary measure.
1. What are the constitutional limits on the Governor's ordinance-making power under Article 213?
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Conditions precedent. Article 213 permits an ordinance only when (a) the Legislative Assembly is not in session, (b) the Governor is satisfied that circumstances exist rendering immediate action necessary, and (c) the subject is within the State's legislative competence. The ordinance has the same force as an Act.
Life and lapse. It must be laid before the House within six weeks of reassembly and ceases to operate six weeks after reassembly unless approved. Its outer life is therefore about six months plus six weeks.
Substantive limits. It cannot amend the Constitution; it cannot abridge fundamental rights. Here the assessment and consent requirements are statutory safeguards touching Article 21 and Article 300A, and stripping them by ordinance is precisely what the power does not permit. It also cannot be used where the House has rejected the Bill, or where the real purpose is to avoid a vote.
Justiciability. The satisfaction is not a blank cheque. Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar (2017) holds that the Governor's satisfaction is reviewable to ask whether relevant material existed and whether the power was used for a purpose the Constitution does not permit. Genuine urgency means urgency, not administrative convenience; the repeated failure to lay the ordinance before the House is a separate breach.
2. What is the legal effect of five successive re-promulgations, and of the payments and possession that took place while the ordinances were in force?
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Re-promulgation. D.C. Wadhwa v. State of Bihar (1987) settled that repeated re-promulgation of ordinances is a fraud on the Constitution: it allows the executive to legislate without the legislature. Five identical ordinances in eighteen months is that pattern in its purest form. Once the first ordinance lapsed, the source of power disappeared; a fresh ordinance cannot cure the lapse retrospectively, and the Governor cannot keep the law alive by issuing a replica each time.
Rights created. Krishna Kumar Singh (2017) holds that the lapse of an ordinance does not create enduring rights. Payments made, possession taken and a wall built under a lapsed ordinance do not acquire permanence merely because they happened. The legislature may validate past acts by a competent law, but until it does, the acquisition rests on nothing.
The compensation argument. That farmers have been paid does not convert an unconstitutional acquisition into a lawful one. Article 300A requires authority of law; after lapse there is none. The correct course is to restart under the parent Act, with the assessment and consent requirements intact.
3. Can the High Court review the Governor's satisfaction, and what relief should it grant?
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Yes, but on a narrow band. The court asks jurisdictional questions: did the Governor have material to be satisfied of urgency, and was the power used to achieve something the Constitution forbids - legislating in place of the House? It does not ask whether the industrial corridor is a good project.
Relief, calibrated:
- Declare the second and subsequent ordinances unconstitutional and quash them.
- Quash the acquisition proceedings to the extent they rest on those ordinances.
- Direct that any fresh acquisition follow the parent Act, including the social impact assessment and the 70% consent requirement.
- Leave the State free to bring a validating law, which will be tested on its own merits and cannot retrospectively cure a fraud on the Constitution.
- Protect the landowners from eviction in the meantime, since dispossession without authority of law violates Article 300A.
An independent finding. The court should record that the failure to lay the ordinance before the House was itself a constitutional breach, distinct from the merits of the land acquisition - otherwise the executive learns only that it must legislate faster, not that it must legislate at all.