West Bengal’s Anti-Goonda Bill: President Returned It, Says ET; Still With MHA, Says Chief Minister

The news

Kolkata. The two papers carry conflicting accounts of the fate of the West Bengal Public Safety and Control of Anti-Social Activities Bill, 2026, known as the anti-goonda Bill, and neither resolves the conflict. The Economic Times, carrying a Press Trust of India report, says President Droupadi Murmu has returned the Bill to the State government for reconsideration after objecting to a provision that may overlap with a central anti-narcotics law, citing an official speaking on Friday. The Indian Express reports that Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Friday denied such reports, including one in The Indian Express itself, called them “baseless”, and said the Bill is “under consideration” of the Union Home Ministry at the level of a joint secretary, which has not sought any clarification. Both papers agree on the Bill’s content: passed by the Assembly in June, it substantially expands the State’s powers to tackle organised crime, extortion, illegal mining, cybercrime and public disorder. A “goonda Act” is the common name for a State law that allows the police and district magistrates to act against habitual offenders, usually through preventive detention — holding a person to stop a future offence rather than to punish a past one — or through externment from a district. Mr. Adhikari explained why the Bill needs the President at all. “We sent this Bill to the Home Ministry because one section has a provision of three years of imprisonment in the NDPS Act, but it is bailable, and we want to make it non-bailable,” he said, referring to the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. When a State law on a Concurrent List subject conflicts with a Central law, the State law can prevail in that State only if it is reserved for and receives the President’s assent. He said the State framed the law “within the provisions of Article 254(2) of Schedule VII of the Constitution” — as the paper prints it; Article 254(2) is the repugnancy clause and the Seventh Schedule contains the legislative lists — and that when Andhra Pradesh and Kerala brought such laws, “they too needed to get concurrence from the President of India, and they did”. He said he was confident of assent. The syllabus link is GS2 on the distribution of legislative powers, the role of the Governor and President in State legislation, and GS3 on organised crime.

Static syllabus linkage

1. Article 200 gives the Governor four options, and reservation is one of them. When a Bill passed by a State Legislature is presented to the Governor, Article 200 allows the Governor to assent, to withhold assent, to return the Bill (other than a Money Bill) with a message asking the House to reconsider it, or to reserve it for the consideration of the President. If the House passes a returned Bill again, with or without amendment, the Governor shall not withhold assent. Reservation is compulsory where a Bill would derogate from the powers of the High Court. In practice, Bills that conflict with Central laws on Concurrent List subjects are reserved so that they can seek the protection of Article 254(2).
2. Article 201 lets the President return a reserved Bill, but the final word stays with the President. When a Bill is reserved, Article 201 allows the President to declare assent or to withhold it. For a Bill that is not a Money Bill, the President may direct the Governor to return it to the House with a message, and the House must reconsider it within six months of receiving it. If the House passes it again, it is presented once more for the President’s consideration — and, unlike the Governor under Article 200, the President is not bound to assent. In State of Tamil Nadu v. Governor of Tamil Nadu (2025), a two-judge Bench laid down timelines for Governors and a three-month period for the President to decide on reserved Bills; a later opinion of a Constitution Bench on a Presidential Reference under Article 143 held that courts cannot impose fixed timelines, while leaving room for limited judicial scrutiny of prolonged, unexplained inaction.
3. Article 254(2) is the gateway for a State law that conflicts with a Central law. Article 254(1) says that if a State law on a Concurrent List matter is repugnant to a law made by Parliament, the Central law prevails and the State law is void to the extent of the repugnancy. Article 254(2) creates an exception: if the State law has been reserved for the President and received assent, it prevails in that State. The proviso allows Parliament to later amend, vary or repeal such a State law. In Kaiser-I-Hind Pvt. Ltd. v. National Textile Corporation (2002), the Supreme Court held that the protection extends only to repugnancy with those Central laws that were specifically placed before the President when assent was sought. That is why a State must identify the conflicting provision — here, according to the Chief Minister, the NDPS Act.
4. Goonda laws sit at the meeting point of State and Concurrent Lists and Article 22. Public order (Entry 1) and police (Entry 2) are in the State List, but criminal law (Entry 1), criminal procedure (Entry 2) and preventive detention for reasons connected with the security of a State, the maintenance of public order or of essential supplies (Entry 3) are in the Concurrent List. Article 22(4) to (7) permits preventive detention but requires that detention beyond three months be approved by an Advisory Board, that grounds be communicated and that the detenu be allowed to make a representation. The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 is the Central law on drug offences, and the Prevention of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1988 (PIT-NDPS) provides for preventive detention of traffickers. Several States have their own goonda or anti-social activities laws, such as Tamil Nadu’s Act of 1982 and the Kerala Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 2007.

Why UPSC loves this

1. Centre–State legislative relations are a staple of GS2. The syllabus asks about “functions and responsibilities of the Union and the States” and the distribution of powers. Questions on the Governor’s discretion in reserving Bills and on delays in assent have been asked in Mains, and the Tamil Nadu Governor judgment made assent timelines a live topic. A presidential return of a State Bill is a rarer event and shows the second stage of the same process.
2. Prelims tests the Articles and their exact wording. The difference between Articles 200 and 201, the six-month reconsideration period, whether the President is bound after reconsideration, and the effect of Article 254(2) with its proviso are classic Prelims material. The Concurrent List entry on preventive detention is also frequently tested alongside Article 22.
3. GS3 links this to organised crime and drugs. The GS3 syllabus covers linkages of organised crime with terrorism and the challenges of internal security. Drug trafficking laws, preventive detention under PIT-NDPS and State goonda Acts are the legal tools in this area, and their overlap is exactly what this Bill exposes.

Analysis

1. A return for reconsideration is a correction, not a rejection. If the ET report is accurate, the President has chosen the milder of the two options under Article 201: rather than withholding assent outright, she has asked the Assembly to revisit one provision. That route allows the State to drop or rewrite the NDPS-related clause and send the rest of the Bill back. It also respects the Assembly’s role, since a flat refusal would have killed the entire Bill for one section. The State’s denial suggests that it would prefer to present the process as still open, which is politically understandable but does not change the constitutional route that follows either way.
2. Making a Central offence non-bailable through a State law is exactly what Article 254(2) was designed to scrutinise. The Chief Minister’s own explanation shows that the Bill changes the bail status of an offence created by Parliament. Bail is a core liberty question, and Parliament calibrated the NDPS Act’s treatment of different quantities and offences. A State that wants tougher treatment within its borders can seek presidential assent, but the Union is entitled to ask whether such divergence creates uneven criminal law across States and whether it will be applied mainly to small users rather than traffickers. The counter-view is that States bear the policing burden of drug trade and should be allowed stronger tools, and that Andhra Pradesh and Kerala were given similar concurrence according to Mr. Adhikari.
3. Goonda Acts carry a long record of misuse, which justifies central caution. Preventive detention laws allow the State to confine a person without trial on the basis of an apprehension, and courts have repeatedly quashed detentions under State goonda Acts for being used against ordinary law-and-order cases or for political ends. Broad categories such as “cybercrime” and “public disorder” in a new Bill widen the set of people who can be labelled goondas. Presidential scrutiny is one of the few external checks before such a law comes into force. That check is valuable only if it examines the whole Bill, not merely the provision that triggers reservation.
4. The confusion itself points to a transparency gap in the assent process. A citizen cannot tell from public records whether a State Bill has been returned, is pending, or is awaiting comments from a Central ministry; the papers here disagree about a basic fact. The Tamil Nadu Governor litigation arose partly because delays were invisible. Publishing the status of Bills reserved for the President, with dates of receipt, ministries consulted and outcome, would cost little. It would also protect the Union from accusations of sitting on opposition-ruled States’ Bills, and States from misreporting their own status.

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