Spitting images

The recent judgment of the five-member Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on a writ petition challenging the removal in 2004 by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government of four governors appointed by the previous Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has been generally welcomed as a helpful step towards strengthening the security of the tenure of governors. However, having been a governor for nearly 12 years and having had close interaction with other governors, I am of the view that judicial pronouncements of this kind will have only a marginal impact on the security of tenure for governors.
Whenever politicians are appointed governors they are generally from among “their own men” and this practice has “politicised” the office of the governor. The Supreme Court has declared through its latest judgment that the removal of a governor or group of governors is open to judicial review if the removal has been arbitrary, malafide or capricious. But very few governors removed from service have shown any inclination to approach the judiciary to get their removal invalidated. Many do not have the financial resources for litigation and most consider it below their dignity to approach the courts for getting back the post from which they have been removed.
New governments have always been keen to take advantage of the provision in Article 156(1) which says that the governor shall hold office during the pleasure of the President, which means the wishes of the Prime Minister and the members of the Cabinet. During the discussions in the Constituent Assembly on the tenure for the office of the governor, many eminent members had pointed out that non-stipulation of the conditions for removal of governors and also of the procedure to be adopted would considerably weaken the independence expected of governors and reduce their status to just another class of employees of the government. The governor is not the only functionary appointed by the President. The judges of the Supreme Court and of the high courts, the Comptroller and Auditor General, chairmen and members of the public service commission and various other functionaries are also appointed by the President, but provisions have been made in the Constitution for the procedure to be followed for removal of the incumbents of these posts before the expiry of their term. Finally, after detailed discussions on the need or otherwise for stipulating the conditions and procedures for removal of governors in the Constitution, the Constituent Assembly agreed with the proposal made by Dr B.R. Ambedkar that governors can be removed by withdrawing the pleasure of the President extended to him at the time of appointment.
Ambedkar, who strongly defended this arrangement in the Constituent Assembly, had said that those appointed as governors would be persons of high standing in the country or of long traditions of service and sacrifice for the country and such persons would be removed only for very serious reasons such as corruption, bribery, violation of the Constitution etc. and that there was no need to mention such reasons in the Constitution. Also, in the background of the high standards of constitutional morality and idealism prevalent at the time of the framing of the Constitution, nobody would have seriously believed that governors would be removed in the manner in which it has been done subsequently on numerous occasions.
I mentioned earlier that I do not have much hope that the recent Supreme Court judgment will enhance the prospects of greater security of the tenure for governors. The Supreme Court in its judgment of May 4, 1979, in the Raghukul Tilak case had adequately explained the independent status of the governor and that the provision that he is to be appointed by the President does not make the Government of India the employer of the governor. However, in spite of such a clear enunciation of the status of the governor by no less an authority than the Supreme Court of India, several regimes that came to power at the Centre did not respect the spirit of this judgment. To date, in fact, governments have continued to deal with governors as persons to carry out their wishes in the states, particularly on issues such as who should be invited to form the government or whether a particular party in the state should be refused the right to form a government and whether President’s Rule should be introduced or not. Unfortunately, this perception about the “political governor” has come to be associated even in the cases of appointments of non-political persons, though such persons are generally selected on the basis of their record as administrators and their adherence to the principle of fairness.
Even politicians who have been champions of political reforms when out of power, like V.P. Singh, chose to remove governors appointed by their predecessors. In fact, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, home minister in Singh’s short-lived government, propounded an absolutely fallacious and dangerous doctrine that with a change of government at the Centre there should also be a change of governors in the states. One can only imagine the confusion that would have been created if all governors were changed every time the government at the Centre changed — the governments headed by V.P. Singh, Chandrasekhar, H.D. Deva Gowda and Inder Kumar Gujral could hardly complete a year each.
Unfortunately the Congress Party, which came to power in 2004 as head of a coalition government, thought it fit to remove some of the governors appointed by the previous BJP government for the reason that they did not subscribe to some of the ideologies of the principal ruling party at the Centre and because they were appointees of the previous regime.
Shivraj Patil, home minister in the first UPA government, had announced that “a person with particular ideology finds it difficult to understand another viewpoint or some times does not want to understand”. He, therefore, propounded a new doctrine that there should be ideological compatibility between the governor of a state and the government in power at the Centre. This was a total negation of the principle of independence of governor as defined by the Supreme Court.
In my opinion the only effective way of ensuring security of tenure for governors is to amend Article 156(1) and to specify in clear terms the reasons for taking action for removal of governors and also the specific procedures to be followed for such removals. Anything short of this may leave the governors in their present status of being employees of the Central government, though some governors have chosen to assert their freedom of action without being “guided” by the Centre.

P.C. Alexander is a former governor of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra