Court case(2017) 3 SCC 1

By the Bihar Non-Government Sanskrit Schools (Taking Over of Management and Control) Ordinance, 1989, the State took over 429 Sanskrit schools and their teachers became State employees. The ordinance was re-promulgated four times and never placed before the Legislature; it finally lapsed in 1992 without an Act being passed. The teachers claimed that they had become Government servants under the ordinances and that this right survived their lapse. The Patna High Court rejected the claim; a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court differed on the law and the matter went through a Constitution Bench to seven judges.

Chandrachud J, for the majority, held: (1) the requirement of laying an ordinance before the Legislature is mandatory, because it is the Legislature's control over the executive's law-making; (2) re-promulgation of ordinances is a fraud on the Constitution and a subversion of democratic legislative processes (affirming D.C. Wadhwa); (3) the satisfaction of the President or the Governor is not immune from judicial review, particularly after the 44th Amendment deleted the clause that made it final, and the Court may examine whether it was obtained on extraneous or irrelevant grounds; (4) the 'enduring rights' theory of Bhupendra Kumar Bose (1962) and T. Venkata Reddy (1985) was rejected: an ordinance is not a temporary Act, and rights created under it do not automatically survive its lapse. Only where the consequences are irreversible or undoing them is impracticable and the public interest so demands will a court preserve them, decided case by case. The teachers' claim failed. Thakur CJ dissented in part on the survival of completed transactions.