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Politics in India having been reduced to unseemly
demonstrations of partisan conduct, many are likely to
take a perverse delight in the embarrassment caused to
the BJP Government in Gujarat by Deputy Speaker
Chandubhai Dhabi on Tuesday morning. The jubilation is
totally unwarranted. The pro-Shankarsinh Vaghela rebels
may have won a point when the Deputy Speaker peremptorily
recognised the 46member group as a legitimate split, but
this victory is bereft of any legal or constitutional
sanction. Since there were legitimate doubts over both
the authenticity and veracity of the list submitted by
the breakaway group, the Deputy Speaker should have
settled the issue on the floor of the House, through the
confidence vote in the Suresh Mehta Government. By
taking matters into his own hands and allowing his
subjective preferences to prevail, Deputy Speaker Dhabi
has made a mockery of the office of the presiding
officer. What is particularly galling is that he
wilfully skirted the crucial business before the
Assembly: to ascertain whether or not the Mehta
Government has the requisite numbers to continue in
office.
The unwholesome conduct of the Deputy Speaker is
reminiscent of other presiding officers who deliberately
engineered a Constitutional crisis through their
activism. Like Bejoy Banerjee, the West Bengal Speaker
in 1967, who adjourned the Assembly sine die after
declaring Governor Dharma Vira's installation of P. C.
Ghosh's ministry as illegal and unconstitutional, Dhabi
has opted to speak on behalf of the House, rather than
allowing the House to speak for itself. Banerjee was
wrong in 1967, and Dhabi's conduct on Tuesday is equally
unpardonable.
However, Dhabi's assault on democracy can be minimised,
if the Gujarat Governor takes it upon himself to uphold
the dignity of the legislature. For a start, the
Governor must desist from taking any view on the majority
status of the Mehta Government. Just because the Deputy
Speaker has recognised the 46-member breakaway group is
not enough reason for the Governor to presume that this
is the last word on the subject. He must make it clear
to the presiding officer that the Assembly must be
reconvened immediately to vote on the confidence motion.
Second, while respecting the High Court's instruction to
ensure that no member is peremptorily disqualified for
violating the whip, he must use the voting pattern in the
Assembly to pass judgment on the issue of a split in the
BJP legislature party. Finally, the Governor must be
circumspect about recommending the dismissal of the Mehta
Government to the President. There is, as yet,
insufficient evidence to suggest that either Mehta has
lost his majority or that there has been a breakdown in
the Constitutional machinery. If he dismisses Mehta at
this juncture, he will be inviting the same flak that
Governor Ram Lal drew in 1983 when he dismissed N. T.
Rama Rao and installed N. Bhaskara Rao as Chief Minister
of Andhra Pradesh. He will also be giving the
beleaguered BJP a new lease of life in Gujarat.
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