Krishna Kumar Singh case
Also called: Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar (2017) · Topic: Union Executive: President, Vice-President, Prime Minister and Council of Ministers · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar (2017) was a judgment by a seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court on ordinances. An ordinance is a temporary law made by the executive when the legislature is not sitting. The Court held that re-promulgation, meaning re-issuing an ordinance after it lapses instead of passing a law, is a "fraud on the Constitution". Laying an ordinance before the legislature is mandatory. The satisfaction behind an ordinance (the claim that urgent action was needed) can be reviewed by courts. The effects of a lapsed ordinance do not survive automatically.
Example
Suppose a government lets an ordinance lapse and then simply issues it again, without ever getting the legislature to pass a law. Under this ruling, that is unconstitutional. Re-issuing ordinances remains a live issue: the Enemy Property ordinance, for example, was issued five times in 2016-17.
Don't confuse with
- D.C. Wadhwa case (1986): an earlier ruling on Bihar re-issuing 256 ordinances between 1967 and 1981. That ruling also called it a fraud. Krishna Kumar Singh went further by making laying mandatory and the satisfaction reviewable.