Political tool
In Goa, Manipur, Meghalaya and Bihar, the BJP brazenly used the Governor’s office to further its political interests. The machinations of the Governors in Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Karnataka to help the BJP, however, did not succeed.
IN ITS HURRY TO CAPTURE POWER BY HOOK or by crook across States, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has turned the Governor’s office into a political tool to subvert democratic processes. The brazenness with which it has regularly undermined the Constitution since 2014 to pursue its political interests is alarming. The ongoing turf war in Delhi is one in a long list of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) unsavoury political manipulations that began soon after Narendra Modi assumed charge as Prime Minister in 2014.
The first display of the NDA government’s political arm-twisting was seen in Arunachal Pradesh in 2015, where it attempted to use Governor J.P. Rajkhowa to carry out its agenda. The Governor advanced the Assembly session, dismissed an elected Congress government and installed a government headed by a Congress dissident. The Supreme Court intervened and overturned the Governor’s orders.
Around the same time, Uttarakhand witnessed muscle-flexing by its Governor. In this case, too, the Supreme Court intervened to restore the democratic process. But not learning any lessons in constitutional propriety, in March 2017, the Governors of Goa and Manipur were seen to be working as New Delhi’s agents by installing Bjp-led governments in these States although the Congress had emerged as the single largest party in the Assembly elections. A similar situation arose in Meghalaya in March and then again in Karnataka after the May Assembly elections there, when, in contrast to the positions taken by the Governors of Goa, Manipur and Meghalaya, the Governor invited the BJP, the single largest party, to form the government, overlooking the claims of the Congress-janata Dal (Secular) alliance. In this case, too, the Supreme Court’s intervention led to the restoration of the democratic process.
In July 2017, the Bihar Governor played a political game. The Governor’s office, headed by veteran BJP leader Kesri Nath Tripathi, ignored the claims of the single largest party and appointed a Janata Dal (United)bjp government after Chief Minister and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar severed ties with the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress. In all these cases, the Governor interpreted the people’s mandate to suit the BJP’S political interests, adopting contradictory positions to benefit the party.
The Arunachal Pradesh case, while being the first in