Opinion Centre’s lesson from Punjab: Trust comes first

The Centre’s decision to quietly shelve the proposal to alter Chandigarh’s constitutional status, after consultation with Punjab BJP leaders, is welcome. The status of Chandigarh, the “City Beautiful”, is an emotive issue for the people of the state. It brings them together, across divisions of politics, religion, caste. Built from scratch, the city was envisioned by Jawaharlal Nehru as balm for a land scarred by Partition. Though declared the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana after the 1966 reorganisation of states, the assumption was that Haryana would find a capital of its own, and Chandigarh would be Punjab’s alone. That promise has hung in the air for nearly six decades now. Meanwhile, the contested capital, along with the unresolved river water dispute, has become a symbol of what many in Punjab see as chronic discrimination by the Centre against a border state whose 13 Lok Sabha seats are not seen to carry decisive weight in Delhi’s arithmetic.

The government’s rationale for the change it proposed and then rolled back — the ease of making laws for the city — may seem administratively sound. But it is unlikely to persuade a state shaped and scarred by a decade of militancy, in which demands for stronger federal powers have been a recurring refrain. With the present Union government, the trust deficit has deepened since the year-long agitation against the now-repealed farm laws. Moreover, the move on Chandigarh could not have come with worse timing. The Union home ministry has just rolled back its controversial attempt to restructure the 59-year-old Panjab University Senate, a step widely perceived as a bid to tighten central control over the state’s oldest and most prestigious university. Simultaneously, Punjab was observing the 350th martyrdom anniversary of Guru Tegh Bahadur, a moment demanding sensitivity, not risk-taking, from those in power.

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For several years now, there have been murmurs over what is being seen as a bid to increase central control of Chandigarh. The 2022 announcement extending central pay scales to UT employees was interpreted by many in Punjab as another way of untying the city from its historical moorings with the state. This was followed by the expansion of the role and share of officers from the AGMUT cadre in the Union Territory’s administration. Against this backdrop, the Centre’s decision to step back now is sensible. History is a good teacher, and in Punjab, it has repeated itself often enough to caution against avoidable provocation in a state that is still to shake off the shadows of past turbulence.