Week means weak?

With the BJP questioning the number of days Karnataka8217;s Governor T.N. Chaturvedi has given to Dharam Singh8217;s government to prove its strength in the House, the state8217;s political storm has knocked at the doors of its Raj Bhavan. So, did Governor Chaturvedi give too much time to the Congress-led government, could his decision be read as an encouragement to 8216;8216;horse trading8217;8217;? Or, is seven days a reasonable period for the upheaval to settle, assume some clarity, given that a political party is breaking up and a government is in crisis? The answer would normally depend upon whether you happen to be a Congress supporter or the BJP8217;s. But what makes the current situation in Karnataka more piquant than normal is this: in the case of Chaturvedi, the party that appointed him now protests his decision.

On the face of it, that peculiarity alone is reason enough to grant Chaturvedi the benefit of the doubt. After all, those appointed as governors in our country have not exactly been known to go against the perceived interests of the parties that have plucked them from political and bureaucratic semi-retirement and retirement and installed them in Raj Bhavans. Just think Bihar, Jharkhand and Goa in the past year and it is apparent that Chaturvedi is going against the gubernatorial grain. Surely, therefore, he must also be right.

That this line of reasoning should so readily suggest itself is disturbing. It points to the larger question that underlies the fuss about the governor: there are simply no norms, no accepted wisdom about the paces the governor must go through in a moment of political uncertainty. The Constitution left it to the governor8217;s discretion. Subsequently, conventions have failed to step into the void. The result is a situation in which a governor can give seven days for the floor test in Karnataka or a month as S.C. Jamir gave to the Rane government last year in Goa, and we have no objective way of arriving at a judgement. Now that the Supreme Court is set to give its detailed judgement on the 8216;8216;unconstitutional8217;8217; imposition of President8217;s rule in Bihar, we must hope that the court lays down some criteria by which to judge the constitutionality of a governor8217;s decision in the future.