There is nothing wrong in the President writing to the Prime Minister to hint that Romesh Bhandari should not be allowed to continue. Even from a conservative perspective, the President has not transgressed his powers, no matter what Chandrashekhar or Harkishen Singh Surjeet say. As the country's highest constitutional functionary, he is expected to guide the Prime Minister and exercise a moral influence as and when necessary. Rajendra Prasad's views on the Hindu Code Bill stalled the legislation for over five years. Finally it was adopted only in a diluted and truncated form. S. Radhakrishnan had put pressure on Jawaharlal Nehru to secure the resignation of Krishna Menon in 1962. Zail Singh returned the Postal Bill to Rajiv Gandhi and it finally lapsed. S.D. Sharma had urged P.V. Narasimha Rao to seek the resignation of Shiela Kaul, charged in the house allotment scam, and of governors Shiv Shankar and Motilal Vora, named in the hawala scandal.There are many instances of Presidents advising PrimeMinisters. It was R. Venkataraman who had suggested to Rao the names of I.G. Patel and Manmohan Singh as finance minister. After Patel turned down the offer, Singh took over and became the architect of the economic reforms.If the President had dismissed the governor, it would have been a worrying development. It would set a precedent for presidential activism which could be misused by rogue presidents. Like most presidents so far, Narayanan is a stickler for legal and constitutional propriety, but this may not remain the case in the future.However, the ``leak'' of his letter to the Prime Minister is not a happy development, although it may help mobilise democratic opinion against Bhandari. Using the media to build pressure is a tactic adopted by adversaries. The relationship between the President and the Prime Minister is not meant to be adversarial nor one of one-upmanship.Leaks of this kind, that are confidential in nature and cover sensitive matters of state, could undermine a relationship basedon trust. In his memoirs, Venkataraman has written that one of the first things he did on becoming President was to devise a system by which PM-President communications could be kept secret. He used to send notes to Rajiv Gandhi in a sealed container, the key to which remained with him or with the then Prime Minister.The proposition that Governor Bhandari opted to dismiss Kalyan Singh and swear in Jagdambika Pal to avoid horsetrading and violence which rocked the Vidhan Sabha last October when Kalyan Singh was given two days' time to prove his majority is a red herring. By extending this logic, one can even argue in support of the 1975 emergency. Horsetrading, if one is honest, has taken place on both sides in UP. Ways have to be found to deal with it. The JMM case, currently being heard in the Supreme Court, deals with this precise question.It is perfectly possible to prevent violence in legislatures, as was demonstrated last Thursday in Lucknow. But allowing the governor to usurp the powers of thestate assembly is a remedy worse than the disease. Romesh Bhandari's action only goes to prove the point. He not only ignored the President's advice for a floor test, as recommended by the Sarkaria Commission and endorsed by the Supreme Court in the Bommai case, it is no secret that he was a partisan actor in the whole drama.The norm of a floor test is the culmination of years of experience of non-Congress politicians who charged the Congress of misusing the office of the Governor for partisan ends. Now Messrs Mulayam Singh Yadav and Harkishen Singh Surjeet are doing exactly what they had earlier accused Indira Gandhi of doing.The UP fracas is one more reminder of how institutions are being steadily undermined. If the governor usurped the powers of the legislature, the courts found themselves playing the role of the Governor, the Speaker and political parties. It was the Court which summoned the assembly. It did not direct the Governor to summon it. It was the Court and not the Speaker which determinedthe business of the assembly. It decided that there would be a composite vote and not a confidence or a no-confidence vote, which has been the norm so far. By asking MLAs to choose between two contenders, it made political parties redundant.If the truth is to be told, the rightness of an action and its constitutional propriety is being judged today more by the criterion of whether it weakens the BJP or not rather than any other consideration. So vitiated has the atmosphere become that criticism of Romesh Bhandari is viewed as defence of Kalyan Singh. This has made public discourse very difficult.There was a time when the BJP and the Left used to act as the moral policemen on issues involving democratic norms.The BJP lost its moral high ground last October. Harkishen Singh Surjeet's intense involvement with the affairs of the State in the last two years has compromised the Left as nothing else has. He has justified even criminality, as long as it is directed against the BJP. His defence of RomeshBhandari and the criticism of the President are the result of such a mindset.
