Mizoram Governor Kamala Beniwal was sacked by the President of India on Wednesday. “The President has directed that Dr Kamla shall cease to hold the office of the Governor of Mizoram,” said a Rashtrapati Bhavan communiqué exactly a month after she was shifted to Aizwal from Ahmedabad.
Sources said the President acted on the opinion given by Attorney General Mukul Rohtagi that Beniwal faces charges of land grabbing in Rajasthan, and such conduct made her unbecoming to hold the post of Governor. Governor of Manipur VK Duggal has been asked to discharge the functions of the Governor of Mizoram until regular arrangement is made, the communiqué said.
Beniwal is the second Governor to be sacked by the Narendra Modi Government after it removed Puduc-herry lt Governor Virendra Kataria. Beniwal was reportedly asked to submit her resignation repeatedly by the Union Home Secretary after the BJP-led NDA Government came to power. She, however, refused to do so and was finally transferred to the Northeastern State.
During her tenure at Gandhinagar from 2009 to 2014, Beniwal was at the loggerheads with former Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. She hit the headlines after she returned the Modi Government’s Gujarat lokayukta Commission Bill 2013, despite the State Assembly passing it with a clear majority.
The controversial Governor objected to a clause that gives all powers to appoint the State lokayukta to a committee headed by the Chief Minister, virtually eliminating the Governor as well as the Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court from the process. The controversy not ended with mere rejection of the Bill. In fact her letter addressed to Gujarat Assembly highlighting her objections on the said Bill, leaked in the media through an unknown e-mail ID also created ripples in the political circle.
Gujarat Assembly had passed the Bill after the Modi Government lost a two-year long legal battle in the Supreme Court over the appointment of retired judge Justice RA Mehta as lokayukta by the Governor. Breaking the tradition, Beniwal had made that appointment without consulting the State Cabinet, much to the then Gujarat Chief Minister and now the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s chagrin. Amid public spats, Modi had repeatedly demanded that Governor Beniwal be recalled, before he became the Prime Minister in May 2014.
Beniwal’s career as politician was equally controversial in her home-State Rajasthan. Along with many other Congress Ministers and political leaders from Rajasthan, Beniwal was an accused in the Rs 1,000-crore Jaipur Development Authority land scam. She was allocated expensive land at low prices on the basis of false affidavits and documents.
Kamla Beniwal had claimed to be a farm labourer putting in 16 hours of work every day for the past 41,000 days according to the records of Kisan Samuhik Krishi Sahakari Samiti limited (KSKSSl), a cooperative body in Jaipur, based upon which land was allocated to her. The cooperatives registrar of Jaipur passed strong strictures against KSKSSl and in its inquiry concluded that the samiti’s claim that they were farm labourers was false, and that the samiti had deliberately and intentionally given false statements. This issue was raised in the Rajya Sabha during the pre-noon sitting which led to stalled proceedings.
Beniwal came into limelight recently, though for wrong reason for her alleged air travelling worth Rs 8.5 crore during her tenure as the Gujarat Governor. She allegedly enjoyed air-travelling worth 277 hours during her 63 trips. Interestingly of these 63 trips, 53 were destined to her native Jaipur. The former Gujarat Governor’s 500 days. Her air-travelling cost to Jaipur alone was Rs 1.4 crore during the period. If sources in the Gujarat Government are to be believed, the State Government is planning to recover Rs 1.4 crore as her personal expenditure.