Articles 123 and 213 deals with the ordinance making powers of the President and Governor respectively. Article 123 of the constitution empowers President to promulgate the ordinance during the recess of the parliament only when he/she is satisfied that the circumstances exist that render it necessary for him/her to take immediate action. Same is the case for Governor under article 213.

Reasons for temptation to use ordinance power-

• To deal with any important and urgent matter that has come up during the recess of the parliament.
• Reluctance to face the legislature on particular issues.
• Fear of defeat in the Upper House where the government may lack the required numbers.
• The need to overcome an impasse in the legislature caused by repeated and willful disruption by a vociferous section of the Opposition.
• To serve any political need and exigency even for its vested interests. 

Opinion of Supreme Court on frequent use of ordinance power-

• In Cooper case (1970), the Supreme Court held that the President’s satisfaction can be questioned in a court on the grounds of malafied.
• The Supreme Court in a D C Wadhwa case (1987) ruled that successive repromulgation of ordinances with the same text without any attempt to get the bill passed by the legislature would amount to violation of the constitution and the ordinance so promulgated is liable to be struck down.
• Recently in Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar case, Supreme Court goes deeper and concludes that the failure to place an ordinance before the legislature constitutes abuse of power and a fraud on the Constitution. The judgment widens the scope of judicial review of ordinances. The court can go into whether the President or Governor had any material to arrive at the satisfaction that an ordinance was necessary and to examine whether there was any oblique motive. 

Conclusion-

The ordinance making power of the President in India is rather unusual and not found in most of the democratic constitutions of the world including that of USA and UK. In the justification of the ordinance making power of the President, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar had said that, mechanism of issuing ordinance was devised in order to enable the Executive to deal with a situation that may suddenly and immediately arise when the parliament is not in session.

However the executives have resorted to the frequent use of ordinances for the reasons mentioned above. Legislative deliberations are the base of democratic system and to issue ordinance with the sole intention of bypassing legislature defeats very purpose of parliamentary discussions. Hence the recent judgement given by SC is in spirit with the intentions of constitution makers and uphelds the dignity of parliament.