Governors should act within constitutional norms and not as agents of the Centre.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s outrage against Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Monday was not the first, but it brought to the fore the role of the governor in relation to the elected government and the legislature. Mr Dhankhar and his counterparts in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have been testing the limits of their power in recent weeks and facing elected governments and legislatures. Fed up with Mr Dhankhar’s relentless scathing attack on him on Twitter, Ms Banerjee blocked him on the platform. The governor then sent him a message calling for “dialogue and harmony among constitutional functionaries”, but immediately posted the same on Twitter. The Chief Minister said that the Governor was trying to treat the elected government as a ‘bonded labour’. He has been summoning the Chief Secretary and the Director General of Police regularly, and frequently tagging the Chief Minister on Twitter when they do not come. Mr Dhankhar had also met Speaker Biman Banerjee in the state assembly’s premises recently. He has withheld the approval of the Howrah Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill 2021, delaying the civic polls. He has alleged irregularities in welfare schemes, questioned the government’s claims about investment in the state and took a jibe at the opposition BJP.
In Maharashtra, Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari has put on hold the election of the Speaker since the post fell vacant in February 2021. He has remained silent on amending the legislative rules to conduct the election of the Speaker through voice vote instead of secret ballot. The governor’s view that the state assembly cannot decide its own rules is unacceptable to the ruling coalition, but is being appreciated by the opposition BJP. Mr. Koshyari had in the past extended support for the BJP while supporting the demand for a special session of the Assembly on women’s safety and security. He had refused to accept the recommendation of the Council of Ministers on the nomination of 12 members to the Legislative Council till the matter reached the High Court. In Tamil Nadu, Governor RN Ravi has not acted on TN admissions in the Undergraduate Medical Degree Course Bill adopted by the Assembly in September 2021. The Governor has to either send it to the President of India for approval or return it for reconsideration. Assembly, but an indefinite delay in decision-making amounts to undermining the legislature, and is unfair. The Bill deals with a question of state-centre relations, as it proposes to do away with the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medical graduate admissions in the state. NEET has been criticized for diluting the powers of the state, and the delay in processing the bill by the governor is only exacerbating the situation. Some of these issues may require debate and discussion before resolution. But any royal tone of the governors can only damage the constitutional plan.
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