Governor’s office rooted in constitutionalism

EVEN as President Droupadi Murmu appointed governors for nine states on July 28 and addressed the Conference of Governors on August 2-3, the main agenda announced by the Union Government was to ask them to be ‘proactive’ and share their views when states and the Centre differed!

Since 2014, governors of states with non-BJP, non-NDA parties in power have been at their interfering worst, causing political skirmishes with CMs.

Advertisement

The BJP’s ‘proactive’ governors in various non-BJP/non-NDA-ruled states have been controversial. A leading English daily editorially commented on July 31 on the excessive number of Bills referred by governors to the President and called for curtailing this power. On August 3, Justice BV Nagarathna of the Supreme Court said: “Some governors are playing a role where they ought not to...”
While the Karnataka Chief Minister is the latest under notice from the governor, for the past decade, governors in Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and other states have been in conflict with the governments. The governor’s office is embroiled in post-SR Bommai judgment (1994) controversies since the use of Article 356 is now checked.

Appointed by the President of India till the presidential pleasure for a five-year term under Articles 152-156 as the head of the state, governors have discretionary and special powers. They are expected to function not as agents of the party in power at the Centre but as titular constitutional heads in the Westminster tradition. However, the partisan tug-of-war orchestrated from the top and the party loyalty of incumbents have muddied and distorted the constitutional mandate.
It was transformed from a colonial office under the three Government of India Acts — 1858, 1919 and 1935 — to a constitutional office by the Constitution. Aside from the Raj Bhawans, discretionary and special powers as well as the transformation of Section 93 of the 1935 Act into Article 356 of the Constitution, vesting in it the power to dismiss an elected government, continue to signify this controversial office.
The Constituent Assembly (CA) consensually retained the governor as the head of state for the states in independent India. However, perceived as potentially partisan, an elected governor was ruled out in favour of a governor appointed by the President. To retain this clause, the Congress issued a whip to its CA members, even as the debate was inconclusive.
Soon after the first General Election in 1951-52, the appointment of C Rajagopalachari as the Congress Chief Minister by Governor Sri Prakasa and the dismissal of Gian Singh Rarewale of PEPSU (1953) by Yadavindra Singh brought partisanship at the outset. The 1959 dismissal of the EMS Namboodiripad government in Kerala at the behest of Congress president Indira Gandhi was a trailer for the events of the 1960s and 1970s.
Then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s misuse of the gubernatorial office during 1967-72 spilled over to the mid-1970s. PMs Morarji Desai (1977-79), Rajiv Gandhi (1984-89) and others followed suit till the Bommai judgment. It was visible in Governor Jagmohan’s 1984 dismissal of the Farooq Abdullah government (Jammu and Kashmir) by allegedly engineering a split in his party. The national uproar following the 1984 dismissal of the NTR government in Andhra Pradesh eventually brought him back and Governor Ram Lal had to quit. Bommai challenged his government’s dismissal by P Venkatasubbaiah in 1989. After the 1994 judgment, Article 356 came under judicial review; hence, the gubernatorial misuse acquired a different hue.
In 1997, then President KR Narayanan reprimanded Romesh Bhandari for acting ‘in a partisan manner’ in arbitrarily dismissing the Kalyan Singh government in UP. Governors Buta Singh (Bihar, 2004), Syed Sibtey Razi (Jharkhand, 2004), HR Bhardwaj (Karnataka, 2009) and Kamla Beniwal (Gujarat, 2009) did not add to the dignity of the office in working at the behest of the Union Government and not functioning as the constitutional heads of state.
Since 2014, governors of states with non-BJP, non-NDA parties in power have been at their interfering worst, causing political skirmishes with the chief ministers concerned. Jagdeep Dhankhar and CV Ananda Bose (West Bengal), Arif Mohammad Khan (Kerala), RN Ravi (Tamil Nadu) and Tamilisai Soundararajan (Telangana) have all been in it. Then Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari swore in Devendra Fadnavis as the Maharashtra CM at dawn after clearance from New Delhi on November 23, 2019, violating the constitutional spirit.
Aside from the elements of colonial control getting transformed into unconstitutional partisanship, the governor’s office has unfortunately been reduced to an instrument of the party in power at Raisina Hill.
The office can still be redeemed by bringing in constitutional propriety. Nehru had stressed to select an eminent public person as governor in consultation with the chief minister of the state concerned. The Rajamannar Committee (submitted its report in 1971), the Sarkaria Commission (1988) and the Punchhi Commission (2010) have discussed that the mode of appointment and dismissal of governors make the office weak and partisan.
An elected governor has not been considered as an option. The Punchhi Commission recommended a fixed tenure of five years and removal only “by an appropriate procedure under which a governor who is to be reprimanded or removed for whatever reasons is given an opportunity to defend his position and the decision is taken in a fair and dignified manner befitting a constitutional office…”
The Punchhi Commission recommended that “the governor should be a detached person and not too intimately connected with the local politics of the state. Accordingly, the governor must not have participated in active politics at the Centre or state or local level for at least a couple of years before his appointment.”
Objectively, there should be a two-tier selection process beginning with the Inter-state Council preparing, following a discussion, a panel of persons valid for one year. A committee consisting of the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition (or the leader of the single largest party in the Lok Sabha), the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India should recommend a panel of three names to be sent to the President for the final selection.