Why SC's decision to clip governors' wings was born out of necessity

Governors are as old as the Mauryan era, but their need in independent India, and “how and who should be chosen”, were hotly debated in the Constituent Assembly.Ambedkar shot down proposals for state legislatures to elect governors. “If the governor has no power of interference in the internal administration of a ministry, which has a majority, then it seems to me that the question whether he is nominated or elected is wholly immaterial,” he said.Nehru agreed, but for another reason: “an elected governor would to some extent encourage that separatist provincial tendency more than otherwise. There will be far fewer common links with the Centre.”The first blot on the governor’s office came on July 31, 1959, when, based on governor B Ramakrishna Rao’s report, the Nehru govt dismissed Kerala’s first communist govt led by EMS Namboodiripad, two years into its tenure. To maintain its stranglehold over governance, the Congress-led Centre appointed pliant politicians as governors, who became willing pawns in the Union govt’s skulduggery to dismiss opposition-run state govts via Article 356.Centre’s shenanigans did not abate even after a five-judge SC bench in 1979 ruled that “governor’s office is not subordinate or subservient to the govt of India (GOI). He is not amenable to the directions of the GOI”.The Sarkaria Commission, which examined the role of governors in dwindling Centre-state relations, in its 1988 report said few eminent people were appointed as governors after 1980. “Persons who were eminent in some walk of life constituted less than 50%.” It also said governors had started regarding themselves as agents of the Union govt, as many of them looked forward to “further office under the Union or active role in politics after their tenure.”The role of governors came under intense scrutiny of a five-judge SC bench which, in 1994, decided the validity of dismissal of the SR Bommai-led Janata Dal govt in Karnataka, BJP govts in UP, MP, Himachal and Rajasthan after demolition of Babri Masjid, and other govts in Nagaland and Meghalaya. It laid down the basic process a governor must follow before recommending Assembly dissolution.When UPA imposed central rule in Bihar in 2005 to prevent Nitish Kumar from becoming CM, a five-judge bench led by CJI YK Sabharwal circumscribed the governor’s powers while criticising governor Buta Singh’s role.UPA regime’s removal of NDA-appointed governors in UP, Gujarat, Goa and Haryana was challenged in SC by BP Singhal. A five-judge bench in May 2010 said, “...change in govt at Centre is not a ground for removal of governors to make way for others favoured by the new govt.”Although SC rulings substantially curbed unscrupulous exercise of gubernatorial powers, some governors kept troubling opposition-run states by withholding assent to bills , or by referring them to the President, to frustrate implementation of policies.SC deprecated Punjab governor’s actions in its 2023 decision, in which it said governors can’t thwart the normal course of lawmaking by the state legislature, by using “assent” as a “pocket veto”. All governors, especially those of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal, would have done well to go through this judgment.With ego or political expediency getting priority over constitutional duties, as happened in TN, something harsh was expected from SC. It exercised powers under Article 142 to annul governor RN Ravi’s “unconstitutional” decisions to refer 10 bills, which were returned by him and re-passed by the assembly, to the President, and ruled that these were deemed to have received governor’s nod.SC also fixed a timeline for the governor to deal with bills, seriously undermining their constitutional position. The ego or machinations of a few errant governors have resulted in the diminution of this constitutional office.Also read: How To Govern Our Governors