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| Deathless hypocrisy in Indian politics | | |
Inder Malhotra
March.18 : When Orissa’s chief minister, Naveen Patnaik, stunned the Bharatiya Janata Party by abruptly terminating the 11-year-old alliance between it and his own Biju Janata Dal, a regional party named after his father, the saffron camp was so angry that it remained incoherent in its reactions for some days. Arguably he was harsh, even by Indian standards, in his treatment of his long-standing ally. But in terms of political wheeling and dealing the exercise was kosher.
However, what followed in the state legislature when it met to determine whether Mr Patnaik still enjoyed the confidence of the House was unquestionably disgraceful. Both propriety and established conventions demand that there should be a full debate and convincingly transparent voting on a motion of confidence were thrown to the winds. In Parliament — despite its great and growing infirmities that Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has so eloquently lamented — the rule has been observed, by and large. It should not be forgotten that Atal Behari Vajpayee’s second government fell in April 1999 by precisely one vote.
Whatever else might have happened during the trust vote won by the Manmohan Singh government in July last year, there was not the least attempt to curtail the discussion and the voting, witnessed by the entire country, thanks to live TV coverage, was eminently fair. Even more uplifting was the parliamentary scene in May 1996, when three governments changed in New Delhi in the course of one month. Each incoming government won the confidence vote after an elaborate discussion and with a convincing majority.
By contrast, several state Assemblies, on similar occasions, have tried to cut corners and manipulate the voting. And presumably because they have got away with it in the past, things were allowed to degenerate even lower in the Orissa Assembly.
Distressingly, things went wrong from the word go. Representatives of the electronic media were barred from the House, evidently to ensure that no audio-visual record of the proceedings could be maintained. Such a ukase could have been issued only by the Speaker, which makes his subsequent actions all the more regrettable. For example, while the chief minister was allowed to have a full say about the achievements of his government, no further discussion was permitted. The motion was put to vote immediately, and declared carried by voice vote. The House was then adjourned sine die. It was from Mr Patnaik’s terse statement outside the House that the country learnt of the motion having been "passed".
Yet, while the ruling BJD and the presiding officer of the Assembly deserve to be blamed for hastening the vote and winning it furtively, the question arises as to what prevented the BJP-led Opposition from challenging the voice vote and demanding a division in the Assembly’s lobbies. Alas, hereby hangs a tale.
The furious BJP knew, as did everyone else, that the Congress, with 32 seats, had decided to vote neither for the motion nor against it. The Left parties having vowed to support the BJD government and several BJP MLAs, like weather vanes, having changed sides, the saffron party could not have mustered more than its 34 votes. So what better tactic could it opt for than to cry foul, condemn the "high-handedness" of the chair and agitate for the negation of the assembly’s decision?
The Congress and the BJP agree on nothing under the sun. But after the murky event they have been at one in demanding of the Orissa governor, Murlidhar Bhandare, that he should forthwith "dismiss" the Naveen Patnaik ministry. This is of a piece with the Indian politics’ deathless hypocrisy. Each of the mainstream rivals has two different positions on the same subject. When in power, it is supportive of the governor’s power of dismissal; when in Opposition, it opposes it vehemently for fear that governor’s office would be misused against it. The same goes for the use and abuse of such agencies as the Central Bureau of Investigation for partisan purposes. Indeed, such dichotomy extends to all other norms of democracy, too. No wonder, there is a yawning gap between the democratic practices as they should be and as they actually are in the world’s largest democracy. Only the form of democracy is maintained, the substance of it is disregarded.
The fallback BJP-Congress positron, that the Orissa Assembly be summoned again and have a "proper" confidence debate and vote makes better sense, but the Raj Bhavan has yet to give its verdict on it. With the excitement over the fast approaching Lok Sabha elections mounting by the hour, it is doubtful if anyone would be bothered about the Orissa Assembly for long.
With all due respect to all concerned, the point must be made that the Orissa Assembly’s speaker is neither the first nor the last of the presiding officers not to have adhered to the high standards of his high office. A large number of them, across the country, with some honourable exceptions, have also acted in a partisan manner.
On no other issue has the chair’s partisanship been more blatant than on the question of defections that threaten the existence of the incumbent government. Unfortunately, in this coalition era and fragile coalitions, such occasions are frequent. According to the anti-defection law, if a third of a party’s members leave it, the split would be legal. Otherwise, the defectors would incur instant disqualification.
Since the presiding officer of the legislature concerned is the final authority, the scope of his or her arbitrariness is immense, as any number of instances underscore. These also prove that the anti-defection law has turned out to be a classic example of the remedy being worse than the disease. A former Lok Sabha Speaker had famously ruled many years ago that the split in a party was a "continuing process", so no action could be taken against those described as defectors until the "split was complete".
The nadir was reached, however, in Uttar Pradesh in the late ’90s when the then BJP chief minister, Kalyan Singh, formed a government of 100 ministers by including in the council of ministers every single defector from all other parties. The Assembly Speaker had then ruled that defection of 12 MLAs from Mayawati’s party of 89 was perfectly valid. This worthy, let it be added, also belonged to the BJP.
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