During his election tour of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi is quoted as having questioned Mr. NT Rama Rao’s moral right to stay on for well over three months as a caretaker chief minister after having dissolved the state assembly. One possible implication of the statement is Mr. Rama Rao should have followed Mr. MG Ramachandran’s example and recommended fresh elections to the state legislature to be held at the same time as the current poll to the Lok Sabha. If that is all Mr. Gandhi has meant his position is unexceptionable. It was unfair of Mr. Rama Rao to have recommended dissolution of the state assembly on November 22 and to have announced a day later that his government favoured a fresh poll on March 3. His reason for recommending dissolution was legitimate. The defection of 55MLAs belonging to the Telegu Desam on August 16 and subsequent developments had “polluted the political atmosphere” in the state. But if he felt that it would not be possible to hold the proposed elections before March 3, he should have waited for the poll to the Lok Sabha to be over before recommending dissolution. In theory at least it is possible that in that case, especially if the Congress had fared well in the Lok Sabha poll, some more Telegu Desam MLAs might have defected and brought down his government. But this was a risk he was morally obliged to take if he stands, as he claims, for value-based politics.
But political morality is one thing, legality is quite another. And legality is on Mr. Rama Rao’s side. He was within his rights to recommend dissolution on November 22 and he was equally within his rights to opt for March 3 as the election date on November 23. And just as the Governor had no choice but to go along with him and dissolve the assembly, the Election Commission had no good reason to reject the date proposed by him. So however unhappy Mr. Rajiv Gandhi may feel over Mr. Rama Rao’s actions and however legitimate his grievance, as Prime Minister he cannot now advise the Governor to dismiss Mr. Rama Rao without provoking another storm all over the country with dangerous consequences for himself and his party. In all probability Mr. Gandhi is not thinking in those terms; after all, he cannot be oblivious to what happened between August 16 when Mr. Rama Rao was dismissed and September 15 when he was restored to the office of chief minister. In all probability Mr. Rama Rao and his cabinet colleagues are taking an unduly alarmist view of the Prime Minister’s statement. Be that as it may, it may be useful to make the point that there is just no case for Mr. Rama Rao’s dismissal. At the same time it too needs to be emphasized that as a caretaker chief minister he cannot take substantive policy decisions, that his plea for re-promulgation of an ordinance for abolition of posts of nearly 36,000 village officers falls in that category, and that the Governor is wholly justified in turning it down.