The last four elections in Goa, Mizoram, Manipur and now Karnataka have shown how the people’s mandate has been truncated. While in Goa, Mizoram and Manipur the BJP got a backdoor entry to wrest power, in Karnataka, though they were on their way to get a dose of their own medicine, there stepped in Governor Vajubhai Vala as their saviour. The Governor invited the BJP, which has 104 seats and one Independent, to form the government and show its strength within 15 days on the basis of it being the single largest party despite the Congress-JD(S) alliance having a strength of 116 MLAs.
Let’s go back to exactly a year ago after the Goa Legislative Assembly polls where the Congress bagged 17 seats and was the single largest party, with BJP getting just 13, Goa Forward three, MGP three and three Independents getting elected. If Goa Governor Mridula Sinha was constitutionally right, she would have asked Congress to form the government and prove its majority. But Congress was left napping or struggling to decide on the leader and BJP’s Nitin Gadkari cobbled up an “impossible” alliance with GFP, MGP and three independents.
The Congress too cannot hold its head high in Karnataka as they have fared badly with just 78 seats. But still, if inviting the single largest party to form the government had been followed in Goa then there would have been no controversy in Karnataka.
Soon after the Goa elections and the Governor’s invite to the BJP, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had justified the move. In a tweet on March 13, 2017, he said, “In a hung assembly if majority of elected MLAs form a coalition, the Governor would be constitutionally right in inviting the leader of majority coalition to form the government and prove their majority within a short period of time.”
Come 2018 and the BJP national president tweets, “Who has the people’s mandate in Karnataka? The BJP, which has won 104 seats. Or Congress which dropped to 78 seats, whose own CM and Ministers lost by big margins. JD(S) who won only 37 seats and lost their deposits on several others. People are wise to realise. The ‘Murder of Democracy’ happens the minute a desperate Congress made an ‘opportunist’ offer to the JD(S), not for Karnataka’s welfare but for their petty political gains. Shameful!”
Shameful is not what happened in Karnataka but what happened in Goa wherein a people’s mandate was not respected. BJP was reduced from 21 to 13 seats and had not the two Congressman – Pandurang Madkaikar and Mauvin Godinho – crossed over the tally would have been even worse. The hapless Congress tried its best on both occasions in Karnataka as well as Goa to knock the doors of Apex court but with no luck.
Calling the BJP to form the government in Karnataka reflects partisan politics by the Governor, who had a long history with the BJP and even vacated his Rajkot seat for Narendra Modi in 2002. He has allowed horse-trading and the undoing of Anti-Defection Law to take place.
Moreover, such situations have arisen repeatedly, purely because what the Governor must do is not codified in our Constitution. It’s left to his or her discretion. Those discretionary procedures are based on precedent and that is dangerous as there is a precedent for every travesty of democracy. There is no greater travesty of parliamentary democracy than horse trading of elected representatives, and a Governor’s focus must be to take decisions that will reduce that possibility. Sadly today, the situation is very different and what one opines is that whatever may be the outcome of the poll result the final winner will only be the BJP.
