The moral high ground which the BJP had tried to occupy slipped from beneath its feet further when Kalyan Singh expanded his Cabinet again. This is in addition to the 93 who were included in the government last time. So adverse was the reaction then that even the party leadership had to say that it was "an unfortunate aberration". The party looks set to violate yet another set of principles at the Centre. Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan, both defeated at the polls, are to be brought to the Rajya Sabha. Rajasthan has not even the Rajya Sabha elections due. That means that Jaswant Singh will be brought from another State, possibly Maharashtra. So far the BJP had held that candidates rejected in the polls should not be inducted into the Upper House because it amounted to hoodwinking the voters. The party used to hammer the Congress whenever it brought in defeated members through the back door. In fact, for years, the established practice is that no party nominates a rejected person to the Rajya Sabha or theLegislative Council, at least for a year or two.This is no reflection on the capabilities of either Jaswant Singh or Pramod Mahajan. They are among the best in the BJP. But their merit is not the issue here. The question is: what sanctity does the people's verdict have?The BJP is under pressure to commit another violation of the spirit of the Constitution, if not the letter. This regards the dismissal of some state governments. George Fernandes has asked for the removal of Rabri Devi in Bihar, Jayalalitha of Karunanidhi in Tamil Nadu and Chautala of Bansi Lal in Haryana. Indeed, they have no right to stay after having lost in the majority of Assembly sectors. But by the same logic, the BJP government in Rajasthan and the Shiv Sena combine in Maharashtra need to be dismissed too.In 1977, when the Janata Government came to power at the Centre, it dismissed all the Congress state governments. Indira Gandhi retaliated when she returned in 1980. Subsequently, both sides realised their mistake. Since then,there has been a convention to keep the Lok Sabha and the Assembly polls separate. Through four elections, the practice has been maintained scrupulously.India's polity has two faces: federal and provincial. The Constitution has delineated subjects for both. The States are autonomous in their field and only when law and order breaks down does the Centre intervene. Dismissing the state administrations on the basis of Parliamentary elections will whittle down the accepted precedent. It will negate provincial autonomy. The ends do not justify the means.People elect state representatives on regional or local issues. But at the Parliamentary poll, they have a larger perspective. They have returned one party at the Centre and another in the states. They have often done so to balance things, to ensure that pulls and counter-pulls have free play. The mere fact that a party wins in Parliament cannot form the basis for its assertion that it ought to rule the states. This would be as anomalous as the claim of aparty which after winning the state elections says that the Parliamentarians from its area be re-elected. And why should the same principle not be applicable to the Panchayats?If the BJP decides to dismiss state governments to placate its allies, it will have to use the governors. They are all appointees of the Congress or the Janata Dal. Will the BJP ask them to send a report that the law and order machinery has failed, the basis for the President to take over a state? It will be quite an embarrassing situation. The Congress dismissed Karunanidhi during the Emergency and earned much censure. Then Kerala went through the same experience. The BJP should not take public opinion for granted.While on the point of propriety, I have not been able to understand the unseemly hurry shown in the announcement of the Bharat Ratna award for C. Subramaniam, the former Union Minister. What does the announcement three days before the election results were out suggests? Either the President or the outgoing governmentwas not sure whether the next regime would honour Subramaniam. It is not fair even to the recipient. He has played a key role in bringing the green revolution to India. If at all he deserves it, the possible change of government should not have mattered.The point that has left me cold is that the name of Jayaprakash Narayan was not even considered. Subramaniam was Finance Minister when Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency. Income tax raids, the harassment of shopkeepers and the malfunctioning of the Enforcement Directorate (at the instance of Sanjay Gandhi) were all under the seal of the Finance Ministry. On the other end of the fulcrum was the Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan, who had defied the Emergency and suffered the consequences. There is no evidence that Subramaniam showed his resentment at the meeting of the Cabinet which Mrs Gandhi convened on the morning of June 26, 1975, to have the Emergency post-endorsed. In fact, everyone fell in line without protest.I am sure the Bharat Ratna citation ofSubramaniam will be replete with adjectives, some deserved. But I wonder if it would include what the Shah Commission, which went into the Emergency excesses, had to say about persons like Subramaniam: "During the Emergency, for many a public functionary the dividing line between right and wrong, moral and immoral ceased to exist."Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India's first Education Minister and a member of the old guard, had the right approach towards awards. He rejected the Bharat Ratna, arguing that those who selected awardees should not themselves be recipients. In contrast, Jawaharlal Nehru got the Bharat Ratna and so did Indira Gandhi, when they were Prime Ministers.I do not know why the United Front government has resumed the Republic Day awards. The first non-Congress Government, that of the Janata Party, had discontinued them on the ground that they were like titles, which the Constitution had banned. Indeed, Article 18, part of the Fundamental Rights, says: "No title, not being military oracademic distinction, shall be conferred by the State." The manner in which the awards have come to be flaunted in name-plates, letterheads and visiting cards shows that the awards are no different from titles like Rai Saheb and Khan Bahadur, which the British used to confer on toadies. That the United Front government, which has liberal elements like the communists in it, should have resumed the practice is both amazing and unfortunate.
