March 9, 1998

Nobody can stop the President asking the PM for advice on constitutional impropriety

There is something profoundly ironical about politicians sermonising on propriety. Over the past week, as President K.R. Narayanan expressed his anguish over Romesh Bhandari's performance at Lucknow's Raj Bhavan, a variety of non-bjp leaders accused him of politicising his office. From H.S. Surjeet to Chandra Shekhar, there seems to be a consensus that the President stay quiet even if the Constitution is mangled. On the other hand, bjp leaders have urged the President to move further on the road to confrontation with Prime Minister I.K. Gujral's caretaker regime. In sum, they are opening the doors to an activist presidency. Either vision is blinkered. True, the President is only the nominal ruler of the country. Even so, he is not a rubber stamp, unthinking, unfeeling and unmindful of any besmirching of the statute book.

All the President did was to ask the prime minister to "advise" him on the conduct of Uttar Pradesh's governor. The underlying message could not have been lost on Gujral, even though his only response was resolute inaction. Whatever the ideological compulsions of Narayanan's new-found detractors and supporters, they must bear in mind that he is not the referee of a political football match. The President of India is the custodian of this country's Constitution -- an institutionalised elder statesman. Since governance is carried out in his name, he has a right to be heard and to be aided and advised. Nevertheless, the President would take care to remember that his conduct in recent times has not always been becoming of the nation's faith in him. As a lame duck Union government has gone about appointing governors and envoys, in gross violation of convention, the President has given in silently and without recourse to a pocket veto. There is a lesson for every actor in this unseemly drama: don't reduce politics to throwing stones -- or Rashtrapati Bhavan to a glasshouse.

Beyond Bhandari

The appointment of governors can no longer be left to the ruling party's whims

Uttar Pradesh Governor Romesh Bhandari is to the Constitution what a reckless bus driver is to pedestrians. Both have scant respect for rules. The drivers can at least be taken off the road, but a delinquent governor like Bhandari -- whose bizarre action of firing an elected chief minister and hiring his favourite has been condemned by the courts and thwarted by the state Assembly -- continues to occupy his seat in the Raj Bhavan, thanks to his political mentors in Lucknow and Delhi. That brings into focus the urgent need to regulate the governors' terms of appointment which are, under the Constitution, an exclusive preserve of the Union Council of Ministers. It is imperative to strike at the root of this cosy nexus between political rulers at the Centre and the man in whom the executive power of a state is vested.

Going by the increasingly federalist tendencies in the polity, there is no justification for the appointment of the governor to be put under the sole charge of the President who, in his turn, is bound by the advice of the Union cabinet. Article 155, guiding a governor's selection, should be amended to introduce a collegium approach. The task of shortlisting gubernatorial candidates may be left in the hands of a committee comprising the prime minister, the leader of the Opposition, the chief minister of the state concerned and the chief justice of India. The collegium, after sifting through names of candidates with proven and untainted record in public life, should present the President with a short-list of, say, three names from which he can make a choice. However, to keep under check aspirants with a political agenda, there should be a strict qualifying clause debarring anyone who has held a political post in the previous five years. Bhandari may be a keen golfer but he could run amuck because governors are not put under any handicap.

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