Governor must steer Bihar out of mess

The Governor is charged with upholding the Constitution in the running of the state to which he is accredited, even if political actors and governments seek to cut corners to advance their ends. The present circumstances in Bihar, from the political and constitutional points of view, are indeed complex. But Keshari Nath Tripathi, in his day a leading light of the BJP and former Speaker of the UP Assembly, and now directing affairs from the Raj Bhavan in Patna, is expected to be on top of the game, given his considerable experience. He must now be seen to be hastening to do the right thing to avoid further constitutional complications.

The Patna High Court has quite rightly declared as illegal the election of JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar as the new leader of his party’s legislature wing superseding Chief Minister Jitan Ram Majhi, who has been expelled from the JD(U) on account of inner-party tensions. This is plainly because the new leader cannot be elected, technically speaking, so long as the strength of the incumbent CM has not been tested on the Assembly floor, even if his political standing continues to look dire, and may indeed worsen if the BJP, which earlier seemed like egging him on, may reconsider its earlier political course in the light of the disaster it has met with in the recent Delhi election.

Mr Kumar quite appropriately urged the Governor to call a floor test right away, before the commencement of the Budget Session of the legislature on February 20. This can easily be done by calling a special session of the Assembly for a day for the express purpose of assessing the CM’s strength in the House since the majority seems to have deserted him. But the Governor, it is not entirely clear why, has scheduled the test of strength for the opening day of the Budget Session.

This was avoidable. The first day of the session should begin with the Governor’s address to a joint sitting of the two Houses of the legislature, and his address is nothing but a statement of the policy of the incumbent government. However, in the present circumstances, there has arisen a clear doubt about the CM’s standing and a successor is knocking at the gates.

In the fitness of things, the governor should not be reading out on the floor of the legislature the policy statement of a government whose majority is in doubt. To do so will be to mock the Constitution, especially after Mr Kumar and other senior leaders called on the President on Wednesday to apprise him of the sticky situation. The governor should move quickly to retrieve the situation lest tongues wag.