The otherwise unlikely revocation of President’s rule in Maharashtra on November 23 at 5:47am, followed by an almost unprecedented oath by Devendra Fadnavis as Chief Minister and Ajit Pawar as Deputy Chief Minister and their subsequent resignation within a couple of days owing to their inability to garner adequate support to face the floor test, paving for a Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress coalition Government, is a grim reminder of our brush with coalitions and the betrayal of electoral mandate.
These are common in the Indian Parliamentary democracy. The electorate are so diverse, from snake charmers to software engineers, from atheists to polytheists that, perhaps in the absence of a common national aspiration, the mandates in the elections are destined to be perforated, facilitating at times ideologically contradictory and heterogeneous groups moulding into an opportunistic entity.
Or to put in the other way, none of the leaders or political parties succeeded to sway the national imagination in a unified direction, after the Nehru-Indira-Rajiv era, until the nation trusted with Modi 0.1 and 0.2 Governments, but this hasn’t changed much at provincial level.
Fractured mandates have taken a toll on the nation and the constitution, too democratic isn’t it? This is perhaps what made Churchill once remark, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with an average voter”. It is no way intended to humiliate or offend the voter, a satire or sarcasm at its best, but certainly makes one ponder over such inevitabilities of the electoral outcomes.
Last year Karnataka, and this year Maharashtra, the pre-emption by the Governors in both the cases, in calling the party ruling at centre without presentation of a clear and distinguishable majority is a disgrace, disloyalty to constitutional principles and blatant departure from constitutional propriety expected of the high office. The Governor is not and shouldn’t self assume to be a political emissary of the party ruling in Centre but instead be an upholder of the Constitution, this makes the office a class apart.
Proclivity of politicians to retain power has come far way from being a penchant to an obsession. Normally, President’s rule is to be revoked on the recommendation of the Union Cabinet, however, in the case of Maharashtra, Rule 12 of Government of India (Transaction of Business) Rules was invoked, which gives the Prime Minister powers to allow departure from the rules in certain circumstances. And in this case approval of the Prime Minister was obtained, which acts as a post-facto approval of the Union Cabinet. Be that as it may, resorting to such an emergency provision ideally should have been made sparingly and under exigencies which leaves no other way out.
The incumbent regime is not an exclusion to the rest of the political class. In fact the nature of coalition politics has been perpetually opportunistic ab initio, with hardly any bearing upon ideology. The contempt for constitutional propriety is directly proportional to the lure for power. There is no denying that a political party has to survive within the rungs of power to be able to say and do things, but then it shouldn’t be by brazen abuse of institutions, even though power is in itself a corrupting influence.
The history of coalition and political opportunism dates back to the 70’s, the first ever coalition Government, which existed between March 24, 1977 and July 15, 1979, headed by Janata Party with Morarji Desai as Prime Minister, and upon his resignation Charan Singh succeeding him couldn’t last beyond two years and some months, far from the full term, owing to lack of support. The second coalition Government was the National Front which lasted from 1989-1991, with two Prime Ministers. However, in between 1996-1998, the nation saw three Prime Ministers, first, the thirteen days Government headed by Atal Bihari Vapayee, then the United Front Government headed by Deve Gowda and then IK Gujral.
Late Biju Patnaik in an old interview to Karan Thapar, had ridiculed and aptly described coalition Government, while making a reference to the United Front Government (1996-1998) as a ‘cluster of lobsters’, united for ‘self interest’ and not ‘national interest’. The recent Maharashtra fiasco is no less than the witty articulation of late Patnaik, as Shiv Sena-BJP coalition ended with a sour note, leaving ideological identities behind, owing to soaring aspirations of Shiv Sena to have Chief Minister’s berth for two and a half years and BJP’s reluctance to concede to it. Interestingly, with NCP-Congress being members of same ideological clan and Shiv Sena founded and thriving on diametrically opposite political ideology, the common minimum programme to run the Government has been solely about Maratha pride and Marathi Manush minus Hindutva. Hope, it doesn’t go the BJP-PDP way as in Kashmir or the JD(S)-Congress way as in Karnataka.
Ambition to serve the nation through the corridors of power is good but not with a spirit of ‘at any cost’, rather it should be with reverence to due process and practice of restrain coupled with due regard to constitutional propriety and morality.
(The writer is a lawyer; views expressed are personal. He can be reached at sjyotiranjan3@gmail.com)
