The whole country will heave a sigh of relief that Mr Ram Lal has at long last resigned as governor of Andhra Pradesh. It is not possible for us to say whether he has been prodded or even ordered to do so by his mentors in New Delhi or he has acted on his own. But two points are obvious. First, not only Mrs Gandhi who has said in Parliament that she was not privy to his actions on the fateful August 16, but also those in her entourage who might have made him or encouraged him to dismiss Mr Rama Rao as chief minister and hurriedly swear in Mr Bhaskara Rao, will share the popular sense of relief. So blatantly partisan and unconstitutional were his acts on August 16 that he had become an acute embarrassment even for those men in the Capital. It would have been a different matter if Mr Bhaskara Rao had managed to buy over or coerce the necessary number of Telugu Desam MLAs before Mr Rama Rao and his supporters left for the Capital and demonstrated their majority to the satisfaction of everyone concerned. But he was not able to stitch up a “majority” of any kind. So Mr Ram Lal’s crime became too patent to be covered up and he had to go. He might have been sacrificed by those who made him do the dirty job in Hyderabad. But that would not win him any sympathy. In view of his deplorable record as chief minister in Himachal Pradesh he should never have been appointed governor in the first place. That has been the general view since he attracted attention to himself on August 16 and that will remain the general view.
Secondly, no one, literally no one, is going to buy Mr Ram Lal’s claim either that he has resigned to uphold the dignity of the office of governor or that before dismissing Mr Rama Rao and appointing Mr Bhaskara Rao as chief minister on August 16 he had “fully” convinced himself that the former had lost his majority in the state assembly and that the latter enjoyed such a majority. He had done nothing of the kind. Indeed, in view of the subsequent disclosures, it is open to question whether he even went through the motions of scrutinizing Mr Bhaskara Rao’s claims. The chances are that he conspired with Mr Bhaskara Rao. This issue has, however, been amply discussed in these columns and we do not need to go over it again.
Finally, the crisis which Mr Ram Lal provoked last week is far from over with his resignation. This will end only when the usurper of the office of chief minister too quits. If Mr Bhaskara Rao possesses any commonsense he should return the mandate which Mr Ram Lal gave him on August 16 to form the government. If he is not prepared to go on his own, an emergency session of the state assembly must be held within three days so that Mr Bhaskara Rao’s lack of a majority can be established and the way can be paved for Mr Rama Rao’s return to office.