Centre treated me unfairly, says sacked Governor

Opening up on his September 12 ouster as Arunachal Pradesh governor, Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa has said that the minimum courtesy a sitting governor deserves was not extended to him.

Talking to this newspaper in an exclusive interview, Mr Rajkhowa said, “The entire approach relating to my removal was totally unconstitutional and unethical. Had I been directly informed by the PM or the President, I would have agreed. But, that was not done.”

Appointed as governor in June 2015, the 1968 batch Assam cadre IAS officer had kicked up a storm when he stood up to the Centre’s resignation demands on “health grounds”, and said that he would rather be sacked. The Centre had asked him to go after the Supreme Court’s observations against him while restoring a Congress government in the state dismissed by him.

“I wish that a healthy mechanism for the removal of a governor was devised so that the high office is not misused,” he said.

On the controversial decision to prepone the date of the trust vote in the state Assembly from January 14, 2016, to December 16, 2015, Mr Rajkhowa said it was not an unilateral one.

“There were no earlier precedents with regard to pre-poning of an Assembly session, and it was a ‘grey area’. As I was not a legal expert, I sought opinion from various legal luminaries, including Additional Solicitor General of India Satyapal Jain,” he said.

Mr Jain’s December 7 letter to Mr Rajkhowa says: “...The Hon’ble Governor will be perfectly justified and absolutely within the constitutional powers to either pre-pone the session or call a special session to consider the resolution of removal of the Speaker “

Mr Rajkhowa also said that he had sought CBI investigations into the involvement of ministers and MLAs in the Hill Transport and PDS scams in Arunachal, involving Rs 35 crore and Rs 250 crore, respectively.

He said: “Nobody bothers about verifying the property reports of public servants, and consequently all cases of ‘disproportionate assets’ owned by the corrupt ones remain unfounded. Ministers are building up five-star hotels or are trying to buy such hotels outside the state, apart from acquiring costly properties across the country”.

Asked if he plans to challenge his removal, Mr Rajkhowa said: “I do not have the financial resources to fight the powerful central government in the Supreme Court”.