Antony Cabinet avoids confrontation with Governor

By Girish Menon

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, JULY 2. The Antony Cabinet has avoided a confrontation with the Governor, Mr. Sukhdev Singh Kang, by grossly underplaying his action skipping a major paragraph from the printed and Cabinet approved version of his address to the House.

That it did not want a confrontation became amply clear when the ruling coalition decided to leave it to Raj Bhavan to clarify its position. At the UDF High Power Committee (HPC) meeting here on Friday evening, the day the Governor delivered his address, several prominent leaders wanted a sharp reaction on the Government's part. Interestingly, the senior Congress leader, Mr. K. Karunakaran, did not attend the HPC meeting, but in his meeting with Mr. Antony on Sunday, he is understood to have expressed strong resentment at the Governor's action.

Some of the UDF leaders felt that a delegation should be sent to the Raj Bhavan to seek a clarification and lodge the Government's protest. For two full days, no clarification came from the Raj Bhavan. One of the basic contention of some of the leaders is that the Governor had left out a crucial portion in the address on which the entire UDF plank had rested during the five years it was in the Opposition. They felt that the Governor's action omitting a crucial paragraph could not be justified.

The attitude of the UDF Government came out clearly in the Assembly when the issue came up in the form of a point of order, raised by the CPI(M) leader, Mr. Kodiyeri Balakrishnan. The Chief Minister volunteered to state that the Governor had omitted the portion due to some reason. The Speaker, Mr. Vakkom Purushothaman's ruling holding his contention that the printed version alone had the approval of the Cabinet virtually bailed him out, and technically set the matter to rest.

The LDF naturally was not keen to rake up the issue as the Governor had left out a part in the speech which was critical of its erstwhile Government. It feebly sought to embarrass the Chief Minister and preferred to let the issue fizzle out.

But there are several leaders, including Mr. Karunakaran, who feel that the matter deserves more serious consideration, even though the issue has been technically solved. There appears to be several imperatives the Antony Cabinet must have considered. One of these is Mr. Antony's overriding concern to observe certain propriety. The Antony Government is hesitant to push the issue any further for political reasons. It does not want friction with the Governor because it feels that it would end up giving a handle to the BJP-led Union Government to remove a Governor, who is a former Chief Justice, not a politician and is ideologically closer to the Congress and the Left parties.

In the absence of a clarification on the issue, the Government's ties with the Governor appear to be strained. It remains to be seen whether the Antony Cabinet would be able to bury the suspicion the episode has generated.

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