Now that the Governor of Tamil Nadu Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar has run out of delaying tactics and finally sworn Vijay in as Chief Minister, it may be time to list the takeaways from this election season.
The first one is obvious. There is a long and disgraceful history of Governors trampling on the Constitution to serve the interests of the people at the Centre who appointed them. When we (with some justification) look at the examples from the last decade with shame and anger, we forget that this practice dates back decades. In the 1980s, NT Rama Rao was unseated in Andhra Pradesh by a pliant Governor acting under Indira Gandhi’s instructions. A similar fate befell Farooq Abdullah in Jammu and Kashmir because of Mrs Gandhi and Arun Nehru.
The only difference between then and now is that the bias has become far more blatant. Mamata Banerjee had a running battle with Governor Jagdeep Dhankar in West Bengal, who took the unprecedented step of travelling around the country to badmouth the Chief Minister. For his pains, Dhankar was rewarded with the post of Vice President. (That didn’t last for reasons nobody can convincingly explain.)
Before this Assembly election, the Centre shifted RN Ravi—a former policeman with no claim to fame except for loyalty to his masters—from Tamil Nadu to Bengal so it would have its hatchet man in place in case the election threw up a complex verdict.
As it turned out, the Centre should have kept Ravi in Tamil Nadu (where he had constantly fought with the elected government) because the election resulted in a hung assembly and it needed Ravi’s hatchet man skills. Instead, it sent Rajendra Arlekar, a lifelong RSS man, who struggled clumsily to delay Vijay’s swearing in. This delay led to attempts at horse trading because politicians believed that the Governor had been instructed to swear in anyone but Vijay.
Vijay’s accession became inevitable only when the Governor had run out of other options. But at least, Arlekar managed to delay the Tamil Nadu swearing-in until the grand government formation in Bengal—attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi—was over so that his bosses did not have to compete with the spectacle of Vijay and Rahul Gandhi sitting side by side.
All this seems shocking, but it is not unprecedented. Even in Indira Gandhi’s time, there was so much disgust with the behaviour of Governors that there was talk of abolishing the post or of at least changing the method of appointing Governors. Nothing came of it because every government always wants its own stooges in Raj Bhavans.
Now the subject has come up again. Though the BJP does not want the discussion to proceed any further, there is no longer any doubt that a national debate is required. India cannot afford to hand the people’s verdict after each election to henchmen of the Centre who can then twist and mangle it for political purposes.
Credibility crisis at Election Commission
The second takeaway from the election season, also about a Constitutional post, is the need to restrain the Election Commission. The current Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, functions in the same way as Governors do: as the central government’s man. He is not the first Election Commissioner to be accused of impropriety but it is fair to say that never before in the history of modern India have we had a man who is less respected handling one of the most important jobs in our democracy.
Respect may be a matter of perspective but it is becoming increasingly clear that the SIR exercise was directed at disenfranchising Muslim voters. This exercise and others like it will eventually lead to deep resentments and alienation. Indian democracy works because all of us have a stake in it. Suggest to Muslims that they count for less than Hindus when it comes to choosing governments and you betray everything that India is supposed to be about.
The BJP is fortunate that, according to many calculations, it would have won Bengal even without the SIR deletions. But it is probable that it would not have won this kind of majority without SIR and that several of its victorious candidates (including its new Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari) would have lost.
My concern is less about the election in Bengal than about the precedent it sets. If the Election Commission can get away with this kind of match-tampering this time (and let’s face it, the EC has escaped any kind of censure), then what happens when it starts fixing matches so completely that there is no doubt about the outcome?
And yet no obvious solutions present themselves. There is no way, in the present system, of preventing the government from choosing loyalists to run Indian elections. And the Supreme Court seems unwilling to get involved in such crucial issues as the SIR deletions.
We are not quite there yet, but if these trends continue, we are heading for a situation where elections are not conducted fairly and the Governors, the men charged with implementing the electoral verdict, are totally in hock to one party or the other.
Also read: Bengal was the undisputed industry leader in India. Why did it lose its way? asked Vajpayee
Nobody is invincible
Indian democracy has many imperfections but at least it gives voters two opportunities every five years (at Assembly and Lok Sabha elections) to elect politicians of their choice. Given the calibre of many of India’s politicians, the only thing that keeps them in some sort of check is the fear of being thrown out. Rig the electoral system and you risk turning India into a banana republic.
All governments know this but they always believe that they don’t need to worry about subverting the Constitution because they will always be in power. That’s what Indira Gandhi believed. And that’s what this government believes.
But nothing lasts forever. Everyone loses eventually. At some stage, all the institutional and constitutional damage each government does with the intention of benefiting itself will benefit the next lot of people who come to power. All of the democratic institutions that Indira Gandhi subverted ended up helping future governments bypass constitutional safeguards. It will happen again.
Politicians never even entertain the possibility of losing. Look at the recently concluded Assembly elections. On the day the results were coming out, the DMK was planning its victory celebrations, not realising what lay ahead. Till the very end, Mamata Banerjee believed the TMC was headed for a landslide victory.
But the reality is that they do lose. And sadly, the damage they have done to India’s democratic institutions lives on, long after they have been forgotten.
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
The first sign of things to come was when the govt changed the composition of the committee to select the CEC. WITH just the PM HM and LOP the match was already fixed. The Opposition should have insisted on the CJI also being a member Even now it’s not too late.
If the Election is so compromised what prevented the political parties to approach the Supreme Court for resolution to the voter deletion issue? Is it not stunning that no political party complained after the SIR was completed even as they cried hoarse before?
Mr.Singhvi is mixing up multiple grievances in this article perhaps because he is disappointed that BJP won.
He should rest assure that BJP of all political parties would be most aware that they cannot always be winning. Most voters for one are not yet tired of BJP.
Such a bullshit piece of lies spread by this article. This is what a stooge journalist look like who takes sides and unable to do proper analysis of losses faced by their bosses. SIR in Tamilnadu Ok but in Bengal not why ? Just because any office is corrupt in eyes of opposition does not make it corrupt. Despite having no proof these so called hate mongers will go to court after 45 days and will cry
SC seems unwilling to get involved. Columnist has been very gentle. So should the poster be.
One cannot but feel sorry for Mr. Vir Sanghvi. He kept campaigning for Mamata Banerjee using the platform provided by media outlets like ThePrint. He kept defending the indefensible atrocities and egregious misdeeds of the TMC govt in West Bengal. All in the hope of a Rajya Sabha ticket – just like his colleague Ms. Sagarika Ghose.
All that effort went in vain. Mamata Banerjee is in no position to send anyone to Rajya Sabha now.
Unfortunately for Vir, we actually can now watch people breaking down your BS by actually doing analysis instead of doing propaganda like Vir does for “who shall be not named”.
I just get baffled that he is so shameless that he actually thinks people would buy whatever he says.
Also why do you assume that SIR only affects the TMC chances ? Are the aadhar card being embedded with information about political affiliation ? Also how do you know Muslims voters deletions affected the TMC ?
The funnily enough even the WIRE went on to acknowledge that your silly propaganda is just to much in front of the electoral data. 13 out of 20 most affected SIR seats were taken by TMC ?
Some seats with high Muslim vote percentage actually got split into different parties ? So how can you tell that Muslims would have voted for TMC ?
You are a joke. A stupid “journalist” who has been doing the bidding of Congress and Rahul gandhi for far too long. I am still waiting for one criticism on the gandhis because I can find a few every month and some of there are serious ones as well.
Eh, werent you on TV the other day with a bunch of analysts and talking about how voters have rejected her? Do you have a doppelganger? Or a split personality? Or are you an opportunist who says different things on different medium?
By blaming it on EC, SIR the likes of you are aligning with the evil woman. Where were you when Abhaya happened? Did you walk the streets? Just shut up now!
Surely the author knows a thing or two about fixing
Mr Sanghvi,
Can you elaborate with statistical data and analysis how the SIR exercise has disenfranchised only Muslim voters?
Please, we don’t want generic and useless statements lkke “By all accounts” and “increasingly clear” and other such bs terms. Get the data of how many Muslim voters and Hindu voters were struck off per constituency, and the result, vote percentage and margin of victory in that constituency.
Get this data, publish it and make your point with sufficient data points and analytics.
Till then your reputation as a pimp for the congress will supercede any fancy language you use and makes your article irrelevant.