The Hindu : President's rule inevitable

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 03, 2002

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President's rule inevitable

By Harish Khare

New Delhi, Sept. 2. The sum and substance of the Supreme Court's pronouncement today in the matter of Gujarat elections is that the country's highest judicial forum has refused to provide any aid and comfort to those within the Bharatiya Janata Party who were inclined to countenance the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi's politics of hatred. More than that, the court has empowered a constitutional institution to stand firm against attacks by politically motivated forces.

From the Deputy Prime Minister, L. K. Advani, down to the voluble party functionaries, the BJP had cast aspersions on the Election Commission just because it would not go along with Mr. Modi's game plan. Now, the institutional prestige of the Commission stands enhanced. The very idea of a presidential reference emanated from a desire to use the judiciary to make political scores. The court has rebuffed these calculations.

A section within the Government, including the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, is reportedly not unhappy that the apex court has virtually spiked Mr. Modi's election stratagem. There is the realisation that at least Mr. Vajpayee would not face the same embarrassment when he visits New York later this month that confronted Mr. Advani during his recent visit to London.

The next battle would be on the applicability of Article 356 in Gujarat on or before October 6 (which will mark the six-month period since the last sitting of the dissolved Gujarat Legislative Assembly on April 6, 2002). In its order of August 16, the Election Commission had spelt out the legal consequences of its inability to hold elections in Gujarat before October 6: "The non-observance of the provisions of Article 174 (1) in the aforesaid eventually would mean that the Government of the State cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution within the meaning of Article 356 (1) of the Constitution and the President would then step in.''

However, there is a view within the BJP that Mr. Modi can continue as a caretaker Chief Minister even after October 6 and that there would be no need to invoke Article 356 to bring the State under President's rule. There is no legal backing for this view, and, in any case, the Supreme Court has already clubbed a public interest litigation on this question with the presidential reference; should the BJP insist on imposing its one more partisan interpretation of the Constitution, many experts believe that it would most surely be rebuffed by the Bench.

For all practical purposes, the Supreme Court today gave the Advani faction of the BJP a way out to extricate the party from the Narendra Modi prescriptions. Mr. Advani cannot apologise in London for what happened in Gujarat, and then come back to bat for Mr. Modi and his political calculations.

A spell of President's rule in Gujarat has become inevitable, and it is now incumbent upon Mr. Advani, as Home Minister, to start searching for a new Governor. Mr. Advani had once declared Sunder Singh Bhandari as disqualified to be the Governor of Bihar (when it was brought under President's rule).

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