President Pranab Mukherjee’s scheduled stopover in Dehradun before he flies back to Delhi during his one-day Uttarakhand trip on Wednesday has had many eyebrows raised. The political circles are agog with curiosity as to whether the state government had maneuvered things to bring the President in Dehradun on the pretext of letting him a darshan of the Kedarnath shrine at a time when it has been reeling under tremendous pressure with the state budget being allegedly stalled by the Centre. “Things might be otherwise than what seems. The wily CM might have manipulated things to have the budget cleared from the end of the Centre with the President’s intervention,” said a state watcher.
The CM appears desperate to have the budget cleared by the Centre at the earliest. He knows that its passage in the Assembly on March 18 is under cloud with his government getting reduced to a minority that day.
As many as nine Congress MlAs raised the banner of revolt against the CM in consonance with the Opposition BJP. As things stood that day, 35 out of 68 MlAs were against the state government.
Had the BJP and the dissidents’ demand for division of vote on the appropriation bill been accepted the defeat of the government on the crucial money bill was imminent.
The Speaker saved the day for the government while declaring that the budget had been passed by voice vote. The matter is still alive with the court dealing with it.
Things that followed were no less intriguing. As per the Vidhan Sabha rule, whenever appropriation bill is presented in the House, be it Parliament or Assembly, the secretary of the particular House is supposed to send a copy of the appropriation bill to the President or the Governor.
Despite the Speaker pronouncing the budget being passed, he did not send the bill to the Governor, seeking his assent till March 27.
Rajbhawan received the bill on March 28 after the President’s Rule was imposed by the Centre which cited the state landing in a grave financial crisis.
To end the stalemate, Rawat cabinet opted for convening a special session of Vidhan Sabha on July 4-5. But, at the same time, the chief secretary has been asked to study the legal aspects of the matter lest the government slips on the banana peels of litigation.
Interestingly, the state cabinet has also decided to appeal to the President to clear the budget with the Governor having referred the budget for the presidential assent.
Now, as the President himself would be in Dehradun it is most unlikely that the CM would not take up the matter with him. “It is well-known that the President has a soft corner for Uttarakhand.
He made it amply clear when he addressed the special session of Vidhan Sabha in 2015.
It is thus easy to conclude that the state government is all set to take up the opportunity to convince the President of his paramount constitutional role in ending the imbroglio in the form of the state budget that has been hanging fire for months,” one of the political observers said.