laws regarding presidential reference and advice of cabinet

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The Government of India may file a presidential reference. However, this must be made through the President as Article 143 of the Constitution of India provides the power of requesting a refernce from the Supreme Court only to the President of India. This is evident from the fact that in the 2G Spectrum case, it was on the request of the Cabinet Ministry that the then President, Shri Pratibha Devisingh Patel, requested a refernece from the Supreme Court. 

However, the question of whether this request made by the cabinet is binding or not is a little vague. One could argue that much like the powers granted to the President in terms of assenting to a legislation, where he may revert the legislation back to the Parliament for review only once, in this case too it may be assumed that the President may revert the advice for review, but only once. The other argument maybe made that it is well within the powers of the President to deny any request made to him for a reference to the Supreme Court as there is no mention of this in Article 143 of the Constitution of India. Thus the ambiguity.

Answered on September 14, 2013.
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