The Congress is shifty

‘Unconstitutional’ is not a badge of honour. It ranks right up there in the lexicon of abuse with ‘immoral’ and ‘unethical’. The Constitution embodies the noblest aspirations of the Indian genius; to say that an action is “unconstitutional” is to say that you have betrayed India. But there are occasions when their lordships are forced to use strong words — and the hasty dissolution of the Bihar Vidhan Sabha is one of them.

The Congress is shifty, it tries to evade discussion of the issues involved by saying that we must await the complete judgment. That is silly, that single word ‘unconstitutional’ is a damning indictment in itself. The high officers of the Constitution came under trial — the governor, the Union cabinet, even the president in some eyes. They flunked the test.

Forget about the BJP and the Samata Party — they have axes of their own to grind. But can you dismiss what the Congress’s own allies are stating quite publicly? The Left Front is silent, piping up only when the RSP and the Forward Bloc hasten to clarify that they were not consulted. Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party says very bluntly that the dissolution was an error, and that the midnight manoeuvres that made it possible compounded the grievance. They are right; the very words used to describe the event — ‘secret’, ‘swift’, ‘midnight’ — are eerie echoes of the Emergency.

The facts speak for themselves. By the first week of March everyone knew what the numbers were in the newly-elected Bihar Vidhan Sabha. It was impossible to form any ministry, even with a hair-thin majority, unless there were defections. Let us give credit where it is due, I clearly recall Comrade Harkishen Singh Surjeet coming before the camera to say that the only real solution was fresh elections. Yet it took our prime minister, a trained economist, 11 weeks to grasp the arithmetic!

On Sunday, May 22, the president was in Moscow. The prime minister was to visit Ranthambore to solve the Mystery of the Vanished Tigers. On or around midnight, the Union Cabinet was summoned to discuss a report recommending dissolution from Governor Buta Singh. (I wonder if Agriculture Minister Pawar was present, and if so what he said.) The necessary papers were faxed to the Russian capital for President Kalam’s signature. The next morning, all thoughts of Bihar laid to rest, Dr. Manmohan Singh went off to Ranthambore! If the situation in Bihar were truly so grave, why didn’t he postpone his trip and go to Patna? Or at least stick around in Delhi?

Let us pass over the history both of Governor Buta Singh and of Bihar politics in general. Their records stink for themselves. As the hon’ble member for Amethi is believed to have said, “There is no government in Bihar.” The question is whether the prime minister and the Union home minister, another true gentleman, exercised their minds. Buta Singh evidently caught a whiff of the winds blowing in the Supreme Court’s corridors. In a preemptive strike, he pointed out that the responsibility was not his but that of the Union government. In his report, the governor said, he had pointed out the probability of defections with the resultant threat to morality. The Union cabinet was under no constraint to accept his recommendation. Constitutionally, he was spot on.

This is the third instance when this ministry is on the back foot thanks to an ‘activist’ governor. But there is a difference between those two mathematical geniuses, Syed Sibtey Razi in Jharkhand and S.C. Jamir in Goa, and Buta Singh. It has been argued that Delhi was caught on the hop by the Raj Bhavans in Ranchi and Panaji. The prime minister and home minister did what they could to repair the damage. (Although, in Jharkhand, it took both the censure of the Supreme Court and a broad hint from Rashtrapati Bhavan.) But aborting the Bihar Vidhan Sabha was a decision – an “unconstitutional” one – taken by the Union cabinet.

The powers of the president are limited in our system. But the librarian at Rashtrapati Bhavan may want to ask Penguin for a collection of Abu Abraham’s cartoons. Specifically, Professor Kalam may want to look at one showing President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed in his bathtub, just signing off on a piece of paper. The caption, as I recall, read: “If you want me to sign anything else it must wait until I finish my bath.” The cartoon, in the context of the time, speak for itself; I will not paint the lily by adding to the great Abu.

Mahatma Gandhi was known for his ‘Teen Bandar’. History may record that 2005 goes down as the Year of Dr Manmohan Singh’s ‘Teen Governor’. And where this trinity is concerned the prime minister and his home minister can see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil!