The imposition of President’s Rule in Uttarakhand on the eve of a vote to test the majority of the Harish Rawat government is yet another instance of a highly questionable resort to a constitutional remedy that was envisaged for extraordinary circumstances. The action is bad in law as much as it pre-empted a floor test, which the landmark Bommai judgment held as the right means to establish a government’s majority. The question of course is how one deals with situations when there are indications that the integrity of the floor test is or will be vitiated through abrupt and wholesale disqualifications. In this respect, the sequence of events in Uttarakhand bears an uncanny resemblance to the developments that led to the recent dismissal of the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh, which was followed by the installation of a BJP-backed government there. The common features are a Congress Chief Minister losing the support of a section of his legislature party, and the opposition BJP making common cause with the dissidents to unseat the incumbent. In both cases, the Chief Ministers decided to risk a face-off in the Assembly, but only after taking the ‘precaution’ of getting the rebel legislators disqualified for defection. On its part, in both States the BJP showed little compunction in openly supporting rebellion in another party.
It was believed that the Bommai judgment of 1994, which sharply circumscribed the Centre’s power to dismiss a State government, would put an end to this abhorrent practice. Apart from demanding a floor test to ascertain a government’s majority, the Supreme Court held that the Assembly could not be dissolved immediately, but only kept under suspended animation until both Houses of Parliament approved President’s Rule. But we have a recent history that demonstrates that such norms can be cynically exploited by political parties. While the ruling party in a State can selectively disqualify legislators ahead of the vote, the prevailing political dispensation at the Centre has the option of placing the Assembly under suspension until it cobbles together an alternative regime. The Supreme Court is hearing a case on the constitutional validity of the imposition of President’s Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, though the questions being addressed there are not germane in their entirety to what has transpired in Uttarakhand. In the latter case, while it is highly doubtful that there was a breakdown of the constitutional machinery as the Centre claims, what is required is some judicial clarity on the limits, if any, of a Speaker’s power to alter the composition of the House in the run-up to a floor test. It is unlikely that a complete breakdown of political morality can be set right by law alone. But even so, there is an urgent need to evolve a further set of norms that inhibit the blatant misuse of Article 356 on the one hand and the cynical use of a Speaker’s power to sustain a sinking regime on the other
