Mrs. Gandhi has not revealed her hand on the question of the dissolution of vidhan sabhas in non-Congress-(I)-ruled states. Perhaps she has not yet made up her mind. This would be understandable if only because the issue is extremely complicated. Meanwhile several Congress (I) members have spoken on the issue. They have quoted the precedent which the Janata government set in April 1977 when it justified the dismissal of governments in the Hindi-speaking states on the plea that the Congress party there had lost the confidence of the people after the preceding Lok Sabha poll and that the Supreme Court had upheld that decision. We opposed that move then for a variety of reasons. We had, for example, argued that a duty elected legislature must be allowed to run its full term regardless of the change of circumstances. On the basis of the consequences of the forcible dissolution of the Gujarat legislature in 1974 and of the movement led by Mr. Jayaprakash Narayan for a similar dissolution of the Bihar vidhan sabha, we had felt that the Janata was ill-advised to persist in the politics of confrontation. But that apart, Congress (1) leaders would do well to ignore the past and concentrate on the political reality which differs from region to region. In Maharashtra and Gujarat, for instance, the Congress (I) has annexed not only most of the seats (39 out of 48 in the first and 25 out of 26 in the second) but also a majority of the votes polled – 53.30 and 54.84 per cent, respectively. The same is not true in the Hindi-speaking belt. The Congress (I) has secured only 36.15 per cent of the votes polled in Bihar, 41.65 per cent in Rajasthan and 35.96 per cent in UP. Madhya Pradesh is on the borderline since the Congress (I) has won 47.17 per cent of the vote there, which is much larger than that of the Janata and the Lok Dal put together.
Implicit in the demand for the premature dissolution of a legislature is the right of recall to which Mrs. Gandhi has been thoroughly opposed in the past. Like the Janata’s action in dismissing Congress governments in 1977 and the Supreme Court’s judgment upholding that action, this argument, too, can perhaps be put aside for the time being. But she cannot ignore the fact of the divergent pattern of voting in different regions and apply the same yardstick everywhere. The vote for her party has not risen substantially in the Hindi-speaking states and it is not inconceivable that the Janata and the Lok Dal may come together there in the event of a fresh poll to the vidhan sabhas and do reasonably well. For all that we know Mrs. Gandhi may win a majority in UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. But what if she does not? The problem has to be handled with care.
Meanwhile, the chief ministers of Maharashtra and Gujarat should either follow Mr. Devraj Urs’s example and step down or cross over to the Congress (I) with their followers, as the legislators in Karnataka and Haryana have done. In their case there cannot be any doubt that they and their allies have lost the mandate of the people and, going by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Article 356 (1), they cannot claim to be carrying on their governance “in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.” Mr. Justice Bhagwati and Mr. Justice Gupta had then held, “When there is such a crushing defeat suffered by the ruling party and the people have expressed themselves categorically against its policies, it is symptomatic of the complete alienation between the government and the people. It is axiomatic that no government can function efficiently and effectively in accordance with the Constitution in a democratic set-up unless it enjoys the goodwill and support of the people.” Possibly the two judges expressed themselves in unduly sharp language. But the judgment stands and applies without doubt to Maharashtra and Gujarat.