HVK Archives: Shame and scandal
Shame and scandal - The Times of India
Editorial
()
20 September 1996
Title : Shame and Scandal
Author : Editorial
Publication : The Times of India
Date : September 20, 1996
What an irony that Gandhinagar, especially created and
named after that apostle of non-violence, Mohandas Kar-
amchand Gandhi, should have borne witness to the bloodi-
est chapter in Gujarat's legislative history! With the
bizarre incidents of Tuesday, the Gujarat assembly has
joined the distinguished ranks of such congenitally
violent legislatures as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil
Nadu. It was almost as if the Gujarat legislators had
trained under the watchful eyes of their more resourceful
counterparts in these assemblies. They traded the vilest
of abuses, exchanged fisticuffs and converted anything
and everything - from pin cushions and microphone stands
to chairs and stools - into handy missiles. The opposi-
tion MLAs participated equally in this mayhem to begin
with; they deftly felled some of their opponents even as
they missed some key targets, the chief minister includ-
ed. But prepared as they were - the balance of advantage
has repeatedly swung from the ruling BJP to the opposi-
tion and back in the last few days - even they must have
been left nonplussed by what happened next. Chief Min-
ister Suresh Mehta, who had apparently agreed to adjourn
the House after conducting a single business - condoling
the death of the Speaker - abruptly changed the rules of
the game. He planted a yes-man in the Speaker's chair,
who then overturned the day's agenda and ordered an army
of plainclothesmen to bodily throw out the entire opposi-
tion to allow the confidence vote to go through unhin-
dered. The marauders did not spare even the journalists,
some of whom were so badly set upon as to need hospitali-
sation.
The dubious manner in which the BJP carried the day has
exposed the party to the accusation that it resorted to
the subterfuge only because it didn't have the numbers to
win the confidence vote. Indeed, with its claimed sup-
port of 92 MLAs - which is one more than the majority
required - there was no reason why the party could not
have faced a full House. And yet, the legitimacy of the
vote has not been questioned in legal circles, which is
what makes the Centre's decision to dismiss the govern-
ment a distressing one. After all, it is open for the
Speaker to suspend unruly members and carry on with the
rest of the business. A confidence vote has similarly to
be won by the majority of those present and voting, which
stipulation was more than fulfilled in this case. That
the Mehta government was hanging by a mere thread was
apparent even to the untrained eye; it should certainly
have been to the UF government with its array of experi-
enced politicos. The more politic thing, in the circum-
stances, would have been for the Centre to let the state
government be, knowing it was anyway bound to collapse.
The rules of politics also permitted it to put the state
Congress up to bringing a no-confidence motion against
the Mehta ministry. The imposition of President's rule
is a needless invitation to the charge that the UF gov-
ernment was looking for ways to finish the BJP through
extra-political means. But now that the deed has been
done, the least the President should do is to order
elections in Gujarat. Keeping the assembly in suspended
animation is to ask for horse-trading, ostensibly one
reason why Gujarat has been placed under Central rule. A
new government formed through such manoeuvres will carry
even less credibility than the outgoing one. It should
be left to the people to choose their rulers afresh.
Foisting a discredited combination on an unwilling people
will only increase the growing contempt for the political
class as a whole.
Back
Top
|
