Government vs Governors: Has anything changed?

Mumbai: Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party to a spectacular electoral victory through an energetic and innovative campaign using the idea of badlav, change, as its cornerstone. Yet in the past few days the regime has exhibited little evidence of any modification insofar as issues related to gubernatorial positions are concerned.
Following phone calls from the home secretary, two governors appointed by the UPA government have resigned. More may follow.

Over time, successive governments have viewed Raj Bhavans as either residences to oblige loyal aides, opulent places where difficult colleagues can be “kicked upstairs”, even comfortable post-retirement positions for servile former bureaucrats or defence officers. Part of the problem stems from how the political class views the position of governors and their utility.
It has only been a rare person who which has actually lent stateliness to the position. In the current crop the majority are unknown entities, rather than someone who has the dignity to hold the office. But if what is being reported turns out to be true and the BJP cleanses Raj Bhavans and installs its chosen ones with similar profile, Mr Modi will have failed to break a despicable practice for petty political reasons. He has the opportunity and the track record of such action.

After becoming chief minister of Gujarat in October 2001, Mr Modi discontinued the practise of plum postings as chairpersons of state corporations for politicians who had to be kept out of the political process. If that tradition could be discontinued by him in the state, what prevents Mr Modi from pursuing a similar path now?

Unlike his predecessors since 1996, the 2014 verdict enables Mr Modi to run his government without any need for “adjustments”. Atal Behari Vajpayee and  Manmohan Singh were forced to compromise because of aggressive coalition partners. They were also not masters of their own political party. Similar was the plight of H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral. But Mr Modi faces no such compulsion from either coalition partners or party colleagues. He displayed the power of his mandate while forming the Council of Ministers, allocating portfolios and when he opened direct channels of communication with secretaries of ministries. One expected, therefore, Mr Modi to be more forthright in nipping any exercise that paints his government in a bad light. Yet, the Prime Minister has chosen to ignore reports and allowed the matter of replacing governors to become a raging controversy.

The issue first surfaced in the first week of June after reports that the home ministry was examining the tenures of several governors. These reports stated that the exercise was being conducted at the behest of the Prime Minister’s Office and added that the positions were being considered as rehab units for party veterans. Predictably, speculative reports followed in the absence of official statement. This was followed by twin developments: a few governors visited New Delhi just when Union home minister Rajnath Singh made the politically inopportune statement that if he had been in their place, he would have hung his boots.

The statements and the related development were just what a news-starved TV channels needed and free-for-all style discussions were back. Peculiarly,
Mr Modi posted on his social media sites pictures of his meetings with several governors who, according to media reports, were on the “hit list”. Some of these could have been courtesy calls given a change of guard in government, not all. The smiling, hand-shake photographs were with some governors who have put in their papers and those who are yet to quit. The fact that
Mr Modi has not said anything on the matter suggests that he is at least supportive of the home ministry’s move to eject governors appointed by the previous government, if not the actual spearhead of the step to get the home secretary to speak to a few governors.

The practise of removing governors began in 1977 when the Janata Party sacked several governors appointed by Indira Gandhi’s regime. In 1980, Indira Gandhi bounced back into office and paid back in the same coin and thus began the practise. The decision in 1977 was taken by the first ever non-Congress government coming to office at the Centre and was justified as reflecting the will of the people. Similarly, the 2014 verdict will go down in the annals as the first polls where a single party secured a majority on its own after a gap of three decades and the same argument would be valid.

But if the argument is taken forward, as pointed out by Shashi Tharoor in an article, it would mean that every time there is a change in regime the President elected during the previous regime should also quit. After all, even the President can be out of sync with the government’s policy. For instance, K.R. Narayanan had sharp disagreements with the Vajpayee government. And by the same logic, if the President stays, so should the governors.

The power of the government to remove governors is bound by Article 156 (1) and the Supreme Court ruling in 2010 on a PIL filed by former BJP member of Lok Sabha B.P. Singhal. The court held that under “Article 156(1), the governor holds office during the pleasure of the President. Therefore, the President can remove the governor from office at any time without assigning any reason and without giving any opportunity to show cause.” However, this power “cannot be exercised in an arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable manner. The power will have to be exercised in rare and exceptional circumstances for valid and compelling reasons. What would be compelling reasons would depend upon the facts and circumstances of each case.”

It would be prudent for Mr Modi to advise belligerent colleagues to allow governors to stay in office till they can build a case to demonstrate that they are working at cross purposes with government policies. But, more importantly, the choice of new governors in place of those who have already quit will determine if
Mr Modi’s promise of “change” was genuine or just an electoral promise.

The writer is the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, the Times