Usurping Power
The union government is ominously misusing Article 356 of the Constitution.
The dismissal of the Harish Rawat-led government in Uttarakhand is not the first instance when Article 356 of the Constitution has been abused. It was done over a hundred times until the Supreme Court, in the S R Bommai case, overruled its earlier judgment (in the State of Rajasthan and Others v Union of India (1977) case) that such decisions by the President were beyond the Court’s reach. Since then it is settled law that the basis on which the President arrived at a decision that the constitutional scheme had broken down in a state and hence warranted imposition of central rule is subject to scrutiny by the higher judiciary and is justiciable.
The Bommai judgment also clarified a few other things: that any dispute over a state government enjoying majority had to be resolved only on the floor of the assembly and that the state assemblies shall not be dissolved until both houses of Parliament endorsed such a move. It is worth recalling that the judgment, while declaring the dismissal of S R Bommai’s government in Karnataka (in 1989 after some of his party members of the legislative assembly announced withdrawal of their support to him as chief minister) as unconstitutional, also upheld the decision to place Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh under central rule in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition on 6 December 1992 as necessarily within the scope of Article 356 of the Constitution. The apex court, then, had arrived at this after scrutinising the basis on which the union cabinet had recommended imposition of President’s rule in those states.
The Congress, historically guilty of starting and perpetuating such abuses, did appear to refrain from its temptations since then; one instance when the party did attempt mischief in Uttar Pradesh was when the then Governor, Romesh Bhandari, played along to dismiss Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Kalyan Singh and make Jagdambika Pal of the Congress the chief minister, but only for three days. The game ended after the Allahabad High Court ordered a “comprehensive” floor test which Pal lost. The BJP invoked Article 356 in Bihar to dismiss Rabri Devi in February 1999 and yet revoked its decision after it was certain that this decision would be defeated in the Rajya Sabha.
Article 356 ought to have been invoked, at least once since then; in 2002 after the secular foundations of the republic were shaken so badly in Gujarat. The apex court, in the Bommai case, was explicit in spelling out that secularism is part of the basic structure of the Constitution. But then, Article 356 was not used in 2002 against the government of Chief Minister Narendra Modi by the then union government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for obvious reasons.
The abuse of Article 356 to remove state governments run by parties in opposition to the one ruling in Delhi had become rampant. Beginning with the dismissal of the first elected communist government in Kerala in 1959, playing ball with the various non-Congress governments across states during 1967–70, the dismissal by the Janata-led centre of all Congress state governments in 1977 (when the matter was first taken to Court and the judiciary decided to stay away from the thicket), a repeat of it in 1980 after Indira Gandhi’s return, the unseemly dismissal of N T Rama Rao in Andhra Pradesh in 1984 (which Indira Gandhi was forced to rescind after mass agitations), the repeated games of this kind in Jammu and Kashmir and until the apex court decided in the Bommai case (in 1994), were only to score partisan political goals.
After the Bommai judgment, it did appear that such blatant abuse of a constitutional provision to serve partisan political ends was no longer possible. This was hardly the case. And the present National Democratic Alliance government has resurrected the spectre of Article 356 misuse by its actions in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
What is particularly surprising is the haste with which the toppling game was carried out. Harish Rawat was removed just a day before the state assembly was to take up the confidence vote test as ordained by the Constitution. And in the given situation—after the speaker had disqualified the nine Congress rebels
from the house as per the provisions of the Constitution’s Tenth Schedule—the outcome was clear: Harish Rawat would have sailed through. The way out then was to remove him, instal another chief minister who would make ministers out of all the dissidents (as Kalyan Singh had done in Uttar Pradesh when he headed a jumbo cabinet of 93 ministers) and thus add one more state to the list of BJP-ruled and “Congress-mukt”. The BJP is well within its rights to raise slogans such as “Congress-mukt Bharat”; the Constitution guarantees this right to anyone. But then, the union government, with all its might, does not have the right to trample upon the Constitution and this they are guilty of in Uttarakhand as the Uttarakhand High Court has also observed in strong language while reinstating the Harish Rawat government.
from the house as per the provisions of the Constitution’s Tenth Schedule—the outcome was clear: Harish Rawat would have sailed through. The way out then was to remove him, instal another chief minister who would make ministers out of all the dissidents (as Kalyan Singh had done in Uttar Pradesh when he headed a jumbo cabinet of 93 ministers) and thus add one more state to the list of BJP-ruled and “Congress-mukt”. The BJP is well within its rights to raise slogans such as “Congress-mukt Bharat”; the Constitution guarantees this right to anyone. But then, the union government, with all its might, does not have the right to trample upon the Constitution and this they are guilty of in Uttarakhand as the Uttarakhand High Court has also observed in strong language while reinstating the Harish Rawat government.
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