The rotten facts

Bihar is in very bad shape. No one can deny that. The law and order machinery is ramshackle, the government is close to bankruptcy, landlord...

Bihar is in very bad shape. No one can deny that. The law and order machinery is ramshackle, the government is close to bankruptcy, landlord armies are uncontrollable and the criminalisation of politics grows apace. The killings of a former RJD minister and a CPIM legislator in 24 hours for which a political mafia and a landlord army, respectively, are held responsible, are shocking reminders of the rotten state of affairs in Bihar.

As is to be expected, political parties have taken conflicting, contradictory and wildly partisan positions on the case for President8217;s rule. The Governor8217;s task is to ignore the politics and come to a firm conclusion on the basis of two questions. Are law and order conditions generally much worse than before? Has the Rabri Devi government8217;s response to recent lawlessness created conditions which will accelerate the breakdown of government machinery? Only if he has satisfactory answers to these can S.S. Bhandari, who is in the process of preparing his third report on theBihar situation, advise the Centre to dismiss the government.

The case for invoking Article 356 must be based on the factual situation as determined by the Governor. Anything else would be against Constitutional provision. It is necessary to hear out the BJP state unit which is now joined by national level BJP leaders and the Samata party, all of whom are demanding instant dismissal. But in the final analysis, it is the Governor8217;s reasoning and his judgment which will be on test in Parliament and possibly in the courts. Therefore, BJP stalwart though he may be by culture and training, Bhandari cannot allow his decision be influenced by anything but the Constitution and the facts. There is no place here for preconceived notions and personal predilections. Even the conviction, widely shared, that the people of Bihar deserve a far better government than the one they have at present, is not relevant to a conclusion under Article 356.

In the context of the Governor8217;s immediate constitutional responsibility, itis curious, to say the least, for the Union Cabinet to be putting together its own team to report on Bihar. quot;Political compulsionsquot; 8212; euphemisms for Jayalalitha and Mamata Banjerjee 8212; may make it necessary for the BJP to temporise by sending off study teams to Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. But political management through the committee system is proving to be no management at all. In Tamil Nadu, one official team replaced by another in order to obtain a politically expedient reading of the situation, satisfied neither ally nor the truth principle. K. R. Malkani and company returned from a futile trip to West Bengal saying things are not as bad as Banerjee makes out. In Bihar now, it is an open question whether the central government team is supposed to help make Bhandari8217;s case for him or to quieten George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar. At the end of the exercise, which set of quot;factsquot; derived from the same sources will be decisive, the BJP8217;s, the Samta Party8217;s, the Governor8217;s or the central team8217;s? As for Bihar,after the latest round of political games have made a worse mess, it will be left to flounder in mayhem, corruption and poverty.