Governors: India
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Dismissal of Governors
SC raps UPA for sacking guvs from NDA term
Dhananjay Mahapatra | TNN
From the archives of The Times of India 2007, 2009
New Delhi: A five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court on Friday dealt an “academic” yet stinging rap on the knuckles of the UPA-1 government for removing four NDA-appointed governors in 2004 immediately after coming to power and assuming office with outside support of Left parties.
The governors of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat and Goa — Vishnu Kant Shastri, Babu Parmanand, Kailashpati Mishra and Kidarnath Sahni — were summarily packed off from Raj Bhavans, ostensibly because of their saffron affiliations.
The reason dished out then — they were not in sync with policies and ideologies of the UPA government — had sounded apt and politically correct. But, it turned out to be legally untenable. The court held that if the reasons for removal were irrelevant, malafide or whimsical, they could invite judicial intervention.
‘Guv can’t be sacked over party’s ideology’
New Delhi: The current UPA government will suffer no ill-effects of the hard-hitting SC judgment criticizing it for removing four NDA-appointed governors. However, the bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and justices S H Kapadia, R V Raveendran, B Sudershan Reddy and P Sathasivam minced no words in registering their strong disapproval of regime-change as a ground for dismissal of governors. This may set the stage for a more cautious approach in the future.
Justice Raveendran, writing the unanimous 56-page judgment, said: “Governor cannot be removed on the ground that he is out of sync with the policies and ideologies of the Union government or the party in power at the Centre. Nor can he be removed on the ground that the Union government has lost confidence in him.”
“It follows therefore that change in government at Centre is not a good ground for removal of governors holding office to make way for others favoured by the new government,” he said, in what could pinch the conscience of the government. Attorney General G E Vahanvati had defended the decision to summarily dismiss the governors saying in a democracy, political parties were formed on shared beliefs and they contest election with a declared agenda. “If a party which comes to power with a particular social and economic agenda, finds that a governor is out of sync with its policies, then it should be able to remove such a governor,” he had argued.
The AG was categorical in his submission that the Centre would have the right to remove a governor without attributing any fault to him, if the President loses confidence in a governor or finds that the “governor is out of sync with the democratic and electoral mandate”.
Governors: not bound by advice of states
CENTRE CAN DIRECTLY RUN NAXAL-HIT AREAS’
A-G: Fifth Schedule Says Guvs Not Bound By Advice Of States
Dhananjay Mahapatra | TNN
From the archives of The Times of India 2007, 2009
New Delhi: Home minister P Chidambaram’s “limited mandate” handicap in dealing with the Naxal menace may get over soon.
The Centre has got a clear opinion from the attorney general suggesting that the Fifth Schedule areas identified by the Constitution, which in six out of nine states are Maoist hotbeds, could be administered directly through governors and in doing so they were not bound by the advice of the state governments.
With this opinion, the Centre can formulate strategies without falling foul of the generally-perceived notion that governors act only on the advice of the state government to fight Naxalism as well as bring meaningful development in areas which have been neglected for years.
The Fifth Schedule areas in the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra are mainly forest and tribal areas where Maoists have entrenched themselves taking advantage of the anger of the poverty-stricken inhabitants, accentuated by poor pace of development.
As these administrative deficiencies kept widening the Naxal base and cadre, a worried President had asked the Centre to seek an authoritative legal opinion as to whether governors could play a pro-active role in exercising constitutionally mandated discretionary powers in the administration of the Fifth Schedule areas without being bound by the advice of state governments.
Attorney General G E Vahanvati has given a thumping opinion favouring exercise of discretionary powers by the governor without consulting the state government, home ministry sources told TOI.
Discussing the width of powers available to the governor as far as Fifth Schedule areas are concerned, the AG has said that if the governor was of the opinion that a particular law or regulation made by a state government be not made applicable to such areas, then he could do so without seeking the opinion of the concerned council of ministers headed by the chief minister.
What is more important, especially for the implementation of the two-pronged strategy — meeting the Naxal fire with fire and at the same time speed up the development process in these areas, the AG has opined that the governor was free to make regulations for the “peace and good governance” of the Fifth Schedule areas.
The AG’s legal opinion virtually coincides with the findings of the Mangeshkar Committee report of the Planning Commission. The Committee had suggested that the office of the governor must play a more pro-active role for ensuring protection of tribal rights, for tribal-welfare and development.
