NO TO YES-MEN GOVERNORS
Replaced by gubernatorial skullduggery on August 16, 1984, while recuperating from heart surgery in the United States, the duly elected chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, N.T. Rama Rao, called upon governor Thakur Ram Lal at Hyderabad’s Raj Bhavan and informed him of the assault being perpetrated on democracy. Lal, a former chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, hand in glove with Indira Gandhi, ordered the state’s police chief, M. Mahendar Reddy, to arrest Rao. He complied. Moments later, asked whether he agreed with what he had been ordered to do, Reddy replied: “The governor is the Centre’s agent and the highest constitutional authority in the state. His word is law.”
On May 16, 34 years later, when Karnataka governor Vajubhai R. Vala decided to swear in the BJP’s B.S. Yeddyurappa as chief minister, he seemed to be channelling Lal and acting as a stooge for the Centre rather than as a principled constitutional authority. It is true the BJP had finished as the single largest party. It is also true that it was some way short of a majority and that the Congress-JD(S) post-poll alliance—“unholy” though Amit Shah called it—had the numbers. Vala even ignored the convention of picking the most senior MLA as pro-tem speaker in preference for one from the BJP.
“The governor has violated all democratic principles by sending his invitation letter late in the night and calling for a swearing-in ceremony the
next morning,” said K.C. Venugopal, Congress general secretary in charge of Karnataka. Unsurprisingly, the BJP disagreed. “When there is no pre-poll alliance, according to constitutional convention,” said P. Muralidhar Rao, a BJP national general secretary, “and the Supreme Court’s observations in the S.R. Bommai case, the single largest party should be given an opportunity to form the government and prove its majority on the floor.”
Both parties can cite precedent in their favour. The Congress can point to recent elections in Goa, Meghalaya and Manipur, where the single largest party was ignored in favour of postpoll alliances formed by the BJP. The Constitution does not offer cut-and-dried guidance in such cases; much is at the governor’s discretion. But Vala did not appear to be acting in good conscience. “Calling on the BJP, which did not have the majority, to form the government was a travesty of the Constitution,” said Dr V. Suresh, president, People’s Union for Civil Liberties. “The trimurthi think they can start their Gujarati business in Karnataka,” smirked H.D. Kumaraswamy, chief minister-designate.
Vala is believed to have consulted former attorney general Mukul Rohatgi. Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad quoted the Bommai verdict and findings of the Sarkaria and Punchhi commissions, but his arguments backing Vala had a whiff of sophistry. “The governor’s sole job,” said Supreme Court lawyer Sanjay Hegde, “was to decide who was likely to command the confidence of the House and invite that lot to form the government. He should have had strong reasons to discard the side with the majority in favour of the single largest party which was well short.”
It is no one’s contention that Vala is the only governor to have proved pliant to his master’s voice, but it cannot be anyone’s contention either that choosing political expediency over credibility is in the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s best interest. Vala has been embarrassed. If any good is to come of this farcical episode, neutral governors must now be appointed and encouraged through rules and protocol to act in the interests of democracy, not political power.
Neutral governors must now be appointed and prodded to act in the interests of democracy