ordinance

An ordinance is a legislative instrument issued by the executive under Article 123 (President) and Article 213 (Governor) of the Constitution of India, enabling the making of law when Parliament or the State Legislature is not in session and immediate action is required. The power is borrowed conceptually from Section 42 of the Government of India Act, 1935. An ordinance has the same force and effect as an Act of the legislature, but it is a temporary measure born of necessity, not a parallel legislative channel. The President acts on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers under Article 74; in practice the ordinance is a tool of the executive, subject to the constitutional limits that govern ordinary legislation, including the fundamental rights in Part III.

The mechanism is tightly time-bound. An ordinance may be promulgated only when at least one House (or both, at the centre) is not in session, and only when the President or Governor is satisfied that circumstances render immediate action necessary. Every ordinance must be laid before the legislature when it reassembles and ceases to operate six weeks from the date of reassembly, unless a resolution disapproving it is passed earlier, or it is converted into an Act. Thus its maximum life is roughly six months and six weeks. A Governor must reserve certain ordinances for the President's instructions under the proviso to Article 213, where the corresponding Bill would have required prior presidential sanction. Re-promulgation of ordinances to bypass the legislature was held to be a "fraud on the Constitution" and unconstitutional in D.C. Wadhwa v. State of Bihar (1987), where Bihar had re-promulgated ordinances for years without enacting laws.

The scope of judicial review was clarified in R.C. Cooper v. Union of India (1970) and decisively in Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar (2017), where a seven-judge bench held that the satisfaction of the President or Governor is judicially reviewable, that ordinances do not create "enduring rights" once they lapse, and that mandatory laying before the legislature is a constitutional obligation, not a formality. Notable instances include the demonetisation-related ordinance route and the three farm ordinances of June 2020 (later enacted and then repealed in 2021). At the state level, ordinance-heavy governance — as historically seen in Bihar and Kerala — illustrates the misuse the Wadhwa doctrine sought to curb.

For the UPSC examination, the ordinance is a high-frequency topic in General Studies Paper II (Polity) and in Prelims, where Articles 123 and 213, the six-weeks rule, and the prohibition on re-promulgation are repeatedly tested. Typical question angles ask candidates to distinguish the President's and Governor's ordinance powers, to apply the ratio of Wadhwa and Krishna Kumar Singh, or to evaluate ordinance-making as a feature of executive overreach versus legislative efficiency. Mains answers should weigh the doctrine of necessity against the principle of parliamentary supremacy and the separation of powers, citing the relevant cases by name and year.