It is a well-established constitutional principle that there is a clear difference between prorogation of the Legislature and an adjournment of a meeting of the Legislature, The power of proroguing a session of the Legislative is exclusively that of the Governor in whom rests the power to summon the same. Between the summoning of a session and its prorogation, the Legislature itself has the power to adjourn from time to time. The Advocate-General has cited a ruling of a Special Bench of the Madras High Court in Narayanaswami v. Inspector of Police AIR 1949 Mad 307, in para. 6 of which, the following passage from the 14th Edition of May’s Parliamentary Practice is extracted:–
“A session is the period of time between the meeting of a Parliament, whether after, a prorogation or dissolution, and its prorogation. …. During the course of a session, either House may adjourn itself of its own motion to such date as it pleases. The period between the prorogation of Parliament and its re-assembly in a new session is termed a ‘recess’; while the period between the adjournment of either house and the resumption of its sitting is generally called as ‘adjourned’.
A prorogation terminates a session; an adjournment is an interruption in the course of one and the same session.” The fourth chapter of Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Mysore Legislative Assembly also gives effect to the same principle namely, that the Speaker shall determine the time when a sitting of the Assembly shall be adjourned sine die or to a day or hour or part of the same day, but a session of the Assembly is terminated by prorogation.