New Delhi: The Supreme Court on November 20 asked the Tamil Nadu governor as to why there was a three-year delay in disposing of bills submitted to him for assent.LiveLaw has reported that a bench of Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra took a dim view of the state’s governors having withheld his assent to 10 bills, over which the apex court issued notice on the Tamil Nadu government’s writ petition on November 10. On November 13, the governor now, R.N. Ravi, disposed of the bills.The court had said that this was a matter of serious concern.“Mr Attorney, the Governor says he has disposed of these bills on November 13. Our concern is that our order was passed on November 10. These bills have been pending since January 2020. It means that the Governor took the decision after the Court issued notice. What was the Governor doing for three years? Why should the Governor wait for the parties to approach the Supreme Court?”, the CJI asked Attorney General for India R. Venkataramani, according to LiveLaw.Venkataramani said that these bills concern the governor’s powers and seek to strip the governor of the power to appoint vice-chancellors in state universities.The bench repeated that the “oldest of the pending bills was sent to the governor in January 2020,” the report said.The current governor, R.N. Ravi, who is locked in a tussle with the state government, assumed power on November 2021, something the AG said in court too.“The issue is not whether any particular governor delayed but whether in general there has been a delay in exercising constitutional functions,” the bench said.The bench adjourned the hearing till December 1 after learning that the Tamil Nadu assembly re-adopted these bills in the assembly.Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who is part of the Tamil Nadu government’s counsel, said that 15 bills are now pending before the governor now. These, include the initial 10.Ravi, as Tamil Nadu governor, has openly gone against the M.K. Stalin-led government in various ways recently – by not reading out the version of the governor’s speech in the state assembly that had been agreed upon by his office and the chief minister’s office earlier this year, and then in ‘dismissing’ arrested minister V. Senthil Balaji.The Deccan Herald, in its editorial, has questioned Ravi’s delay and called for this removal.