Beyond Jharkhand

Published : Apr 08, 2005 00:00 IST

The judicial intervention in the functioning of the Jharkhand legislature throws up important questions about the spheres of authority of the different wings of India's democratic set-up.

VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN in Ranchi and New Delhi

THE National Democratic Alliance (NDA) legislators and activists who had gathered on the evening of March 15 for an official "celebratory" dinner at the sprawling residence of Inder Singh Namdhari in Ranchi were evidently a happy lot. Their host had been elected Speaker of the Jharkhand Assembly a few hours earlier, and, more important, the Arjun Munda-led NDA government had proved its majority in the House on that day. Yet, they betrayed a great deal of concern in their conversations. Even the brief appearance made by the ebullient Chief Minister and his pep talk that the "NDA will march from victory to victory" did not purge the sense of unease.

Pashupathinath Singh, a senior leader in the State Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a two-time Member of the Legislative Assembly from Dhanbad, gave an explanation for the rather sullen mood. "The worry was on account of the realisation that the NDA cannot rest on its laurels though it had established its superiority in the numbers game in unmistakable terms," he told Frontline. "We have crossed a big hurdle," he added, "and scored the first victory in the battle to retain power in the State, but have to be doubly cautious because one false move can upset all the gains." At the time of writing this report, the Munda government was well on its way to completing its first week in office, and in the days after Namdhari's dinner, the NDA had augmented its strength in the Assembly.

When Namdhari did a head count amid pandemonium in the Assembly on March 15, the NDA had the support of 40 MLAs in a House of 81. This number would have made it imperative on the part of the Speaker to use his casting vote to help the government out of trouble. But, the nomination of an Anglo-Indian member and a later announcement about the merger of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) - which has one elected representative, Kamlesh Kumar Singh - with the State BJP boosted the NDA's tally to 42 in a House of 82.

But representatives of the NDA at various levels in the hierarchy of Jharkhand politics appear not ready to shed their caution despite the "positive" developments. Interestingly, the majority of these leaders list out the same set of reasons that they gave on March 15 for persisting in the "vigilant mode". In fact many of them are of the view that the NDA still enjoys a wafer-thin majority. They also hold that the situation makes the NDA leadership vulnerable to political blackmail by pressure groups within the legislature and outside. Some of them also perceive signs of increasing demands from MLAs, especially from those belonging to smaller parties and independent groups. They point out that those who are making exorbitant demands continue to raise the threat of crossing over to the side of the Opposition United Progressive Alliance (UPA) if their requirements are not met.

An oft-repeated concern from the NDA camp, particularly from the activists of the BJP that leads the NDA in the State, relates to the five MLAs, including independents and others, who are part of the Munda Ministry. By all indications, Sudhesh Mahato, their leader, has demanded the post of Deputy Chief Minister. He has apparently set a deadline until the next Assembly session, when the vote on account is to be passed, to concede his demand. "Take out these five MLAs from our side," said a senior BJP leader, "and the government is in a minority." Another apprehension relates to Enos Ekka, technically an independent MLA but politically a member of the Jharkhand Party, and Kamlesh Kumar Singh. Both may invite disqualification if proceedings initiated against them by their respective parties move fast enough at the level of the judiciary, for both the Jharkhand Party and the NCP had issued whips to the MLAs to oppose the NDA.

Even the loss of these two MLAs could make life difficult for the Munda Ministry, although it may not be technically reduced to a minority.

Commenting on these developments, including the apprehensions in the NDA camp, Stan Swamy, a Ranchi-based social activist and independent political observer, called it a typical outcome of a fractured electoral mandate. "A fractured mandate," he said, "throws up a clutch of political, moral, legal and constitutional issues and every one of these issues has to be addressed collectively and comprehensively. Arun Jaitley, BJP leader and former Union Law Minister, may say that the questions involving the post-election situation in Jharkhand relate only to the legal and constitutional improprieties committed by Governor Syed Sibte Razi in inviting Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader Shibu Soren to form a UPA government and the commotion created by pro tem Speaker P.K. Balmuchu in the Assembly. He may also accuse Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee of creating an unwarranted controversy with the judiciary. But all that cannot mask the fact that the problems raised by a fractured mandate are multi-dimensional and have to be handled with a multi-dimensional approach."

Stan Swamy asks whether the questions on political morality thrown up by the apprehensions in the NDA camp - as well as by the efforts of the NDA leadership to satisfy pressure groups and get over legal complications, including disqualification of MLAs - are any less serious than the improprieties involved in Governor Razi's action. He also wondered what moral authority the NDA had when it weaned away two MLAs to its side in a transparent transgression of the anti-defection law that its own government at the Centre had formulated not so long ago.

In a sense, the points emphasised by Stan Swamy have been highlighted by the UPA both in the Assembly and outside. According to Stephen Marandi, rebel JMM leader and unseated Deputy Chief Minister in the Soren Ministry, the UPA insisted on taking up the membership status of Ekka and Kamlesh Singh not only to ensure adherence to democratic norms but to expose the NDA's double standards on the anti-defection law. Shibu Soren also focussed on similar issues when he met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a day after the Munda Ministry proved its majority. He pointed out that a perusal of the sequence of events relating to the formation of the NDA government would reveal a gross violation of democratic norms and large-scale horse-trading involving crores of rupees. He also demanded that the Prime Minister initiate an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the alleged horse-trading that had taken place ahead of the trust vote.

Agreeing with Stan Swamy's perception that hung verdicts stipulate multifaceted solutions, Indra Bhushan Singh, senior advocate of the Allahabad High Court, hoped that the present situation in Jharkhand would set the bench-mark for handling fractured mandates and goad the country's politicians and constitutional experts towards a solution to this problem. "I hope that these developments will at least cause a creative beginning to efforts in this direction," he added.

THERE are of course some signs of an inspired, if not promising, beginning. For the first time, a Governor's invitation to a party to form the government has been taken to the judiciary, leading to the first court intervention in the conduct of the legislature. This in turn has evoked a righteous objection from the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee, against the judiciary's encroachment into the areas of powers of the legislature. The Speaker gave a concrete form to his objection by calling for a presidential reference on the issue and convening a meeting of Assembly Speakers to discuss the implications of the judicial intervention. His move has been acclaimed as a step in the right direction not only by prominent sections of the political class but also by eminent jurists and constitutional experts such as Fali S. Nariman.

There can be little doubt that the country's polity has been demanding an exercise of this nature for more than a decade. The verdict of the1989 general elections, which brought the Vishwanath Pratap Singh-led National Front government to power with the support of the ideologically different BJP, became the harbinger for a series of fractured mandates both at the national level and in the States. That repeated hung verdicts coincided with the collapse of the political and organisational supremacy of the Congress, especially in North Indian States, could well explain the party's inadequacies in capitalising on such situations.

The Jharkhand imbroglio and the mess that the party leadership created there once again highlighted the lack of political astuteness on the part of the oldest party in the country to convert a fractured mandate to its benefit. The NDA, despite being the winner now, had reaped similar disgrace and defeat five years ago in Bihar. In fact, the Bihar Assembly polls of 2000 threw up a situation almost similar to the one in Jharkhand after the 2005 polls. It was a hung verdict and Governor Vinod Chandra Pande invited Samata Party leader Nitish Kumar to form an NDA government. (The Samata Party later merged with the Janata Dal-United.) The Nitish Kumar Ministry, which took the oath of office on March 3, appointed an Anglo-Indian nominee and tried to prop up its numbers. But like Shibu Soren in 2005, Nitish Kumar could not rustle up the numbers and the Rabri Devi-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) government returned to power.

According to Indra Bhushan Singh, the crucial difference between the situation in Bihar in 2000 and the one in Jharkhand is in the level of the debate. Although the political and moral dimensions of Bihar's hung verdict and related developments were discussed widely, the legal and constitutional implications of the same did not come into focus. "It has happened this time, essentially on account of the interventions of the Supreme Court and the Lok Sabha Speaker." Indra Bhushan Singh is of the view that this is a great opportunity to evolve guidelines to handle hung verdicts. "It can be made use of only if we do not lose the momentum by succumbing to partisan political interests," he added. But the signals on this qualitative aspect - of not losing momentum owing to partisan political interests - are not heartening.

Central to the disappointment on this front are the reactions, especially from the NDA, to the Speaker's effort to advance the debate on the issue. Having achieved its limited objective of returning to power in Jharkhand, the NDA turned its back on all efforts to develop guidelines to handle hung verdicts. This is the only inference that can be drawn from its castigation of the Speaker for having created an "unwarranted controversy" with the judiciary and its threats to move a no-confidence motion against him. In the process, it decided to boycott the meeting of Assembly Speakers convened by Somnath Chatterjee.

What is ironical is that the very same leaders of the NDA - belonging to non-BJP parties - who supported the Speaker's initiative and hailed him as a protector of the powers and rights of legislatures initially have turned around, obviously in view of partisan political considerations. Janata Dal (United) leader Prabhunath Singh supported the Speaker's position on March 10, when he first reacted to the Supreme Court order dictating terms for the conduct of the Jharkhand Assembly. He even told mediapersons that the NDA may make "limited gains" out of the court order but he and his party had no doubt that it militated against the supremacy of the legislatures in their sphere and in turn the basic tenets of the Constitution. But by the time the meeting convened by the Speaker was to take place, his party was parroting the BJP's arguments.

The NDA resolution against the Speaker released after its meeting of March 14 reflected this turnaround. The resolution said that the NDA was deeply disturbed by the attitude of the Speaker in creating an unwarranted controversy and accused him of not having the vision and statesmanship to fulfil a high legislative responsibility. It accused him of deliberate misinterpretation to create a legislature versus judiciary issue. According to the NDA, Somnath Chatterjee, instead of being concerned with the subversion of democracy by the Governor and the pro tem Speaker appointed by the unseated JMM government, was concerned only with the remedy adopted to check the subversion.

While officially the NDA has adopted this aggressive and confrontationist posture, a stream of moderate adversarial view is advanced as an explanation by the non-BJP constituents of the NDA, which opposed the Speaker's initiative belatedly. This view holds that the Speaker was within his rights to seek a presidential reference under Article 143, but adds that the court was compelled to step in because all other institutions had abdicated their responsibility. There is nothing to be gained at this juncture by insisting on a presidential reference, basically because the constitutional crisis in Jharkhand has been resolved with the dethroning of the Soren Ministry and the return of the Munda government, the argument goes on. It is also contended that the Governor's conduct and that of the pro tem Speaker have been mitigated by the return of the majority group in the Assembly to power, through the Supreme Court's intervention. This view, however, fails to address the vital query raised by the Speaker, whether the legislators and parliamentarians can allow this type of judicial intervention to become a precedent for all times to come and perpetually allow the judiciary to impinge upon the authority of the legislature.

Speaking to Frontline, Somnath Chatterjee said that his effort was to assert the powers and rights assigned to members of the legislatures by the Constitution and evolve mechanisms for the legislature to settle its own problems.

"The provisions of the Constitution, particularly Articles 122 and 212," he said, "clearly symbolise the supremacy of the legislatures in their own sphere." By any yardstick, the Speaker's position involves the plea that the judiciary and the office of the President or the Governor should not be dragged in frequently to break political deadlocks. It also states that politicians and legislatures themselves have to find ways and means to deal with such situations, which are bound to repeat in the future, given the manner in which political polarisation is taking place in different parts of the country. The Speaker's initiative could well provide a breakthrough in these times of fractured verdicts. But, perhaps India's political class is not ready for it.

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