President Zail Singh will face an unprecedented situation in the history of the Republic on Monday in case Mr NT Rama Rao brings to New Delhi 170 Andhra MLAs and parades them in front of him. This will place him in a cruel dilemma which the Union government should anticipate and help resolve in advance.
Only once before in the past 34 years has an Indian President been confronted with a somewhat similar problem. In 1967 opposition MLAs from Rajasthan had been paraded in front of President Zakir Husain in a bid to establish that they constituted the majority in the state legislature and that the then governor, Dr Sampurnanand, should have called upon their leader to form the government. But there is no comparison between the situation then and now.
For one thing, the difference in the strength of the Congress and the combined opposition, including independents, was just one and that too as a result of the defection of one Congress legislator. For another, the state was already under President’s rule. So President Zakir Husain was not called upon to confront the issue immediately and could allow the governor to settle it in good time. As it happened, Dr Sampurnanand’s term expired soon thereafter and the new governor, Mr Hukam Singh, former Speaker of the Lok Sabha, could tackle the problem de novo.
The text of the Constitution offers no clear guidance to the President in the matter. He appoints governors on the advice of the council of ministers headed by the Prime Minister and they hold office at his pleasure which means he can transfer them or sack them on the advice of the same council of ministers. But there is no provision in the Constitution which authorises the Union government to issue directions to a governor.
Nicety In Disuse
This is, of course, a constitutional nicety which has not been honoured for years. Governors have as a rule acted as creatures of the Union government and obeyed its orders which in the nature of things have been oral. But in Andhra’s specific case, the Prime Minister’s aides have been at pains to let it be known that Mrs Gandhi was not in any way privy to the governor’s actions and that in fact she knew of his decision to dismiss Mr NT Rama Rao and swear in Mr Bhaskara Rao as chief minister only when her attention was drawn to a news agency report to that effect.
The Prime Minister’s critics have dismissed all this as an afterthought and argued that in today’s political climate no governor can take such momentous decisions without clear orders from the Centre. But whatever the truth, in law the governor has acted on his own authority.
This raises an issue of constitutional and political importance. The implication of Mr Ram Lal having acted on his own authority in law, if not in fact, is that when 170 or so Andhra MLAs meet the President to complain against his actions and to demand a redress, he cannot in law take the position that he would forward their memorandum or demands to the Prime Minister.
The President, as is well known, is guided by the advice of the council of ministers. But in this case, the council cannot advise him and he cannot seek its advice. This puts him in a dilemma. He can hold out a vague assurance as he did on Thursday when he told opposition leaders: sochengaye (we shall think it over). But that is no resolution of the problem.
There is, however, a way out. If by the time the Andhra legislators call on him an announcement is made in Hyderabad that the assembly has been convened to meet say on Friday to enable Mr Bhaskara Rao to prove that he commands majority support, the President can in clear conscience tell them that they should establish their claim on the floor of the House.
Indeed, as Mrs Gandhi, according to her aides, became aware that the governor had staged a virtual coup on Mr Bhaskara Rao’s behalf, she should have immediately “directed” him to convene the assembly within a week. For if Mr Rama Rao was willing to face the legislature in two days, there was no good reason why Mr Bhaskara Rao could not be made to do so in as long as a week’s time.
Loss Of Credibility
Mrs Gandhi has personally suffered a considerable loss of credibility on account of her failure to ensure an early meeting of the Andhra legislature. This will be further damaged if Mr Rama Rao is able to demonstrate his majority in New Delhi unless the date of the meeting of the assembly – not later than the coming week-end – is announced in advance.
From the evidence available so far it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Rama Rao enjoyed majority support when the governor decided to dismiss him and swear in Mr Bhaskara Rao as chief minister and, indeed, that Mr Rama Rao has still not lost his majority.
But even if this were not so, the governor would stand condemned for his refusal to meet Mr Rama Rao’s supporters when they went to the Raj Bhavan first on Wednesday night and then again on Thursday, and his failure to verify his charge that the list submitted by Mr Bhaskara Rao carried forged signatures of several MLAs. It was Mr Ram Lal’s duty to obtain the list of such MLAs from Mr Rama Rao, meet them in person, secure written affidavits from them to say whether they were for Mr Rama Rao or Mr Bhaskara Rao and, in case they favoured the latter, he should have confronted the former with this incontrovertible evidence of his having lost their support.
Mr Ram Lal did nothing of the kind, though he must have been fully aware that the Jammu and Kashmir governor had armed himself with such evidence before he asked Dr. Farooq Abdullah to resign as chief minister, that he was willing to show the evidence to Dr. Abdullah and that despite all these precautions Mr Jagmohan had come in for a great deal of criticism on the ground that he should have acceded to the then chief minister’s request for an early session of the legislature so that the issue whether or not he commanded majority support could be tested on the floor of the House.
It is not for us to say whether Mr Ram Lal was acting under instructions from some power centre in New Delhi which remains to be identified, or whether he behaved as if possessed on his own in order to appear more loyal than the king. But it is evident that he has done grave violence to the spirit of the Constitution, that no governor in independent India has ever behaved in this manner, that the founding fathers failed to provide a remedy to deal with such blatant partisanship because it could not even occur to them that the likes of Mr Ram Lal will ever hold the august office of governor – comparable in some ways to that of a chief justice – and that the damage to the political system can be repaired to some extent only if he is dismissed and steps are taken to ensure that such an individual would never again be appointed to that or similar other posts. The plant of democracy in our country is still delicate and cannot survive such violent assaults as the one Mr Ram Lal has delivered.
While Mr Ram Lal’s behaviour is unprecedented, he is not the only discredited politician to have been appointed governor or to other important official and party posts. Such appointments have proliferated in recent years. Inevitably these have weakened Mrs Gandhi’s moral authority. After all, even her most ardent admirers cannot argue that a man who had to be asked to step down as chief minister because he had become a liability to the state and to the ruling party on account of the activities of his family members deserves to be appointed governor and that too in a state where an opposition party happens to be in office. This too constitutes a violation of the spirit of the Constitution. This might not worry Mrs Gandhi but the political fall-out should, in her own and her party’s interest. She owes nothing to such people and she need not go on paying the price of keeping them in comfort
Difference On Timing
There can be a difference of opinion on the timing of Mr Ram Lal’s dismissal. While the consensus appears to favour his immediate removal, there are people who argue that he should be made to preside over the undoing of his misdoings, that is, he should convene an early meeting of the Andhra legislature and swear in Mr Rama Rao as chief minister if Mr Bhaskara Rao fails to win, as he is almost certain to, an endorsement from it. But on the basic issue that he must go, there can be no disagreement.
Recently yet another unhealthy precedent was set when Mr AP Sharma was selected as Congress nominee for election to the Rajya Sabha while he was still serving as governor of West Bengal. This was an open admission by the ruling party that the CPM’s charge of Mr Sharma functioning as a Congress partisan was justified. Mr Ram Lal, too, wants to be a member of the Rajya Sabha. If Mrs Gandhi obliges him as well, she will be setting an even more dangerous precedent and providing a confirmation for the opposition charge that the worst instances of violation of norms do not bother her.
The Times of India, 20 August 1984