States: Madhya Pradesh; Dual Centres of Power

On the morning of July 22, when Chief Minister Digvijay Singh called on Governor Bhai Mahavir at the Raj Bhavan in Bhopal, he carried with him a copy of the Madhya Pradesh Government's Rules of Business. The pleasantries exchanged quickly, the suave Digvijay tersely quoted from the rule book to show that the Governor had no business to interfere in administration, which is best left to the elected government. The soft-spoken but stubborn Mahavir stuck to his guns and cited precedents to prove that governors were more than just figureheads. For the next hour, as Digvijay and Mahavir tried to score points, two senior officials, Chief Secretary K.S. Sharma and Secretary to the Governor P.J. Oommen, watched, barely able to hide their embarrassment.

For the past few weeks, Bhopal has been witness to a cold war between the constitutional head of state and the head of government. If Congressmen's hackles were raised in April when the new BJP Government at the Centre posted Mahavir, a 76-year-old former party leader, to Bhopal, they have been openly crying foul in the past few weeks, alleging that he has turned the Raj Bhavan into a local BJP-RSS shakha.

FLASHPOINTS

Congress alleges that under Mahavir, the Raj Bhavan has become an RSS-BJP den.

The Governor suspects that the public attacks on him have Digvijay's tacit approval.

Digvijay sore with Mahavir's critical, off-the-cuff remarks against the state Government.

Mahavir often summons state officials and issues verbal instructions to them.

Mahavir believes that the public attacks on him have the tacit approval of Digvijay. On his part, the chief minister believes that the Governor's critical, seemingly off-the-cuff remarks about the Government are part of a grand design by the Centre to destabilise the only major state in which the Congress is in power and which is due to elect a new assembly later this year. As Digvijay says, "There is a clear administrative line of control. There cannot be two centres of power." To which, Mahavir retorts: "I cannot interrupt, but I can intervene."

Both perhaps have a point. Mahavir, a former teacher, is in the habit of directly summoning senior Government officials to the Raj Bhavan and issuing verbal orders. Digvijay views this as an affront to his authority and believes that requests from the Governor should be routed through the state Government. Things came to a head last week when Digvijay prevented Director-General of Police V.P. Singh from providing the Governor with information that he had sought regarding a gang-rape case. Earlier, the Governor had written directly to the DGP seeking intervention in another case. Says Mahavir: "It concerned the case of a man I have known personally for a number of years. He was being harassed. I had asked the DGP to look into his complaint and I don't see anything wrong with that." According to Mahavir, people come to him with their grievances because they have more faith in the Raj Bhavan, and, in any case, he is only "helping the Government by bringing to its notice the leakage in the administration of justice".

These, however, look like minor skirmishes compared to the tussle that broke out in June when Mahavir refused to sign an ordinance issued by the state Government seeking to regularise encroachments by slum-dwellers. For a week, the Government was livid as Mahavir sat with aides, searched for loopholes and raised endless queries about the implementation of the scheme that was widely believed to be a poll-eve populist measure. Congress leaders were quick to term him anti-poor, took out a protest rally in Bhopal and accused him of obstructing welfare schemes at the behest of RSS-BJP leaders. Said MPCC spokesman Manak Aggarwal: "The Raj Bhavan has become a centre of BJP-RSS activities." They also threatened to gherao the Raj Bhavan and launch an agitation against him.

In the end, Mahavir had to relent and sign the ordinance. But that he was seething with rage was evident when he summoned the chief minister and asked him, "Is this a declaration of war against me?" Mahavir then promptly went on to do precisely that. Earlier this month, the Government sought to issue registration papers to slum-dwellers in Bhopal. Nothing wrong in that, except that Mahavir simply did not like the idea of Digvijay's picture being published on the registration papers. "It is like Nitish Kumar publishing his photograph on railway tickets," he says.

Digvijay, however, had the last laugh on this occasion: he duly turned up at the Raj Bhavan with documents of an insurance policy for tendu leaf pluckers that the previous government had initiated. They showed the policy papers had carried the picture of the then chief minister, the BJP's own Sunderlal Patwa. Mahavir though shows no signs of letting up. Last week, he took the unusual step of addressing a press conference to criticise the populist measures taken by the Digvijay Government to win over the voters on the eve of assembly elections. "It is like a student who does not study the whole year," he says. "But when the examination approaches, he resorts to desperate measures. He acquires guide books, goes to temples, even makes preparations for copying."

Digvijay, who has survived in office for an unprecedented five continuous years, battling opponents within his party and outside, may not quite appreciate that parable. With the poll date drawing closer and the BJP determined to wrest Madhya Pradesh from the Congress, the tussle may have just begun.