Nani Palkhivala, eminent Supreme Court advocate, has written: By the plain device of repromulgating ordinances again and again, they are kept indefinitely alive, while the assembly and prorogation of the legislature are merely interludes in the ordinance raj. As D.C. Wadhwa has pointed out in his book (Repromulgation of Ordinances: A Fraud on the Constitution of India, 1983), in Bihar state alone 256 ordinances were kept alive for periods ranging from one to fourteen years. (Palkhivala 1984; p.xv)
