Why is Vajpayee smiling?

That goes for Tamil Nadu, where Jayalalitha has been breathing down the PM8217;s neck, and in West Bengal, where Mamata Banerjee, for all her support to Vajpayee, has been demanding the dismissal of the Jyoti Basu government.It also puts an end to the pressure mounted by the Samata Party during the last 11 months to see the back of Laloo Yadav. Railway Minister Nitish Kumar is believed to have told the PM that the Samata party was satisfied that the Government had tried its best, and appropriate signal had gone to the anti-Laloo constituency inBihar.

The Prime Minister can, therefore, feel a little more relaxed that there will be less pressure on him now, at least on this front.

The Prime Minister has been for revoking President8217;s rule, after the Lok Sabha ratified it, and he managed to have his way. The dominant view in the BJP was that the Government should place it before the Rajya Sabha and face defeat because that was a more honourable way out. Most of the BJP8217;s allies with the exception of the Akali Dal and the TDP 8212; were of this view. Many in the party suspect that revocation is calculated to embarrass Home Minister L K Advani because the move originated in his ministry, and he presided over the Cabinet meeting which decided to go in for President8217;s rule in Bihar, when the Prime Minister was away in Jamaica attending the G-15 meet.

Had Vajpayee gone to call on Sonia Gandhi soon after her statement, that Rabri Devi had forfeited the right to rule, and before deciding to use Article 356, the story might have been different. It ispossible that the Congress leadership could have been persuaded to abstain in the vote in both houses of Parliament.

No party can afford to formulate its strategy by relying only on public statements, and this is obviously what the BJP did 8212; if its leaders are to be believed.

That Laloo is the biggest beneficiary of the Bihar botch-up goes without doubt. It can give a fillip to the Third Force. The Congress has suffered a setback not only in Bihar, its plans to come to Delhi on its own have also gone awry.

The decision to revoke President8217;s rule comes also as a major embarrassment to the President. He has been put in the position of eating his own words. It would have been different had he merely appended his signature to the proclamation. Everyone knew that he had no option but to sign, since the Government had forwarded the same proposal he had sent back last September. But the President chose to make a noting on the file, expressing his satisfaction that a deterioration in law and order necessitatedCentral rule. And now, only three weeks later, K.R.Narayanan will have to sign an order which reverses his own order.

The only difference in the situation is that there have been more massacres in Bihar in the meantime.

There is force in the argument that Bihar did not merit President8217;s rule. Sunder Singh Bhandari8217;s logic 8212; in his two reports he has listed all the acts of commission and omission of the Rabri government instead of zeroing in on the breakdown of the constitutional machinery 8212; should place half a dozen states under Central rule.

Murders continue in Delhi unabated. Extortions and gang-killings in Mumbai. For years now, the Naxalites have ruled the roost in several parts of Andhra Pradesh.

It is now becoming clear that the Samata Party forced the Government to go in for a gamble to signal its constituency that it was serious about throwing out the Laloo-Rabari duo.

While the political use of Article 356 is not new, Bihar has underscored the increasing difficulty of using the emergencyprovision in a coalition era. Over the years, chief ministers and this includes BJP CMs like Bhairon Singh Shekhawat have made a case that it should be used very sparingly. The framers of the Constitution had made it very clear that this 8220;invasion8221; by the Centre in the provincial field must not be one that was 8220;wanton, arbitrary and unauthorised by law8221;.

As the chairman of the drafting Committee, B.R. Ambedkar had cautioned, 8220;In fact, I share the sentiments..that such articles will never be called into operation and that they would remain a dead letter.8221; And if they did, he expressed the hope, the President would ensure that a warning was first given to the state and if it failed, 8220;the second thing for him to do will be to order an election allowing the people of the province to settle matters by themselves. It is only when this remedy fail that he would resort to this article.8221;

The Sarkaria Commission made it clear that a deteriorating law and order situation by itself could not invite theprovision. Justice Sarkaria stipulated many other don8217;ts. Article 356 should not be used in a situation of 8220;maladministration8221;, or because the ruling party has suffered a defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, as happened first in 1977 when the Morarji Government dismissed nine Congress-ruled state governments, and then again in 1980 when Indira Gandhi paid back the Janata Party in the same coin. The Commission also forbade the use of the Article to sort out internal differences in the ruling party. This had happened in Punjab in 1951, when President8217;s rule was resorted to for the first time to sort out the differences between Gopichand Bhargava and Bhimsen Sachar. Again in the early 8217;70s, Indira Gandhi had dismissed the ministry of Kamlapati Tripathi in Lucknow ,and later revived the assembly to instal H.N.Bahuguna in his place.

Nor could Article 356 be exercised on the sole ground of stringent financial exigencies, or invoked merely on the ground that there were serious allegations of corruption against theministry.

It had to be justified when there was a political crisis, and no party could form a government as happened recently in Goa, or there was internal subversion, or physical breakdown or non-compliance with the constitutional directions of the Union Government.

Article 356 may not be dead, though some chief ministers have called for scrapping the Article. But we are moving towards a situation when it is likely to be used in three kinds of scenarios 8212; when no party is in a position to form a government, when there is civil war in a state, or when a state wants to secede from the Union 8212; unless the country returns to one-party rule.