Time’s up, Governor

Administrative over-reach and constitutional impropriety can prove very expensive. The cynical political manoeuvring that marked the night of May 22, when the decision to dissolve the newly-formed Bihar legislative assembly was taken and executed, has now come back to haunt the Manmohan Singh government in the form of a Supreme Court verdict that has ruled the action “unconstitutional”.

The entire chain of events was set off by a report from the office of Bihar Governor Buta Singh, alleging moves to “break away MLAs from Ramvilas Paswan’s LJP” and a “disturbing indication” of attempts to “distort the verdict of the people”. He, however, provided no concrete proof of this. Worse, he did not even seek to satisfy himself that there was substance to these allegations. It is this unholy haste with which he recommended the dissolution of the assembly — and the anxiety on the part of the UPA government to carry out such a dissolution under the cover of darkness — that bears the marks of malafide intent. Here was the office of the highest official of a state — appointed to expressly “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution — being used apparently as an outpost of interested politicking. Since Buta Singh has both failed, and been seen to fail, the responsibilities of his high office, he must go. Brazening out this one, as the UPA government may be tempted to do, would severely dent its credibility. The Congress president may speak of the “need for probity in governance” for all time to come, but the words will mean little if they do not translate into meaningful action at crucial moments — as the present one is, without doubt.

Indeed, this moment of shame should occasion deep introspection on the part of the prime minister and his home minister. The Congress legacy of constitutional propriety is not exactly exemplary and the party has paid a heavy price for the arbitrary actions of its past. Today, it continues to succumb to the the lure of bending the norm in a desperate search for power — as the incidents in Jharkhand not so long ago indicated. In the face of executive arrogance, the courts have invariably had to step in. If the executive finds this galling, it has only itself to blame.