What the Bharatiya Janata Party attempted to do in Uttarakhand is of course a violation of sacrosanct constitutional principles, but I look upon it more as a metaphor for the hubris of power. There is no doubt that an organised attempt was made to entice Congress legislators. In normal parlance this is called horse-trading and is in direct violation of the anti-defection law as outlined in the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution. There is also no doubt that the imposition of President’s Rule on the advice of the Central government one day before the scheduled floor test in the House, was a blatant misuse of Article 356 and against the clearly prescribed guidelines of the S.R. Bommai judgment (1994). The Uttarakhand high court rightly thundered that what was attempted cut “at the roots of democracy”. It rescinded the imposition of President’s Rule, restored status quo ante, and has fixed April 29 for a floor test. The severity of the reprimand by the Uttarakhand high court, and the transparently unconstitutional machinations of the BJP government at the Centre are there for all to see.
The BJP government appealed against this judgment in the Supreme Court. The apex court has temporarily blocked the revival of the Harish Rawat-led Congress government and restored President’s Rule. While the legal issues will continue to be fought in court, the BJP has definitively lost the perception battle. In the people’s court the impression is gaining ground that the party that claimed the high moral ground when it came to power in 2014, has, in fact, descended to a cynical machine that values political power irrespective of principles or rectitude. It is for this reason that the Uttarakhand fiasco is going to be seen not so only for its legal implications but as a metaphor for the manner in which the BJP has morphed since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.
There are several reasons for this change of image. Firstly, the brazen manner in which the BJP leadership reneged on several key promises made during the parliamentary election campaign came as a shock to even its supporters. The promise to bring back black money and put '15 to '20 lakh in the pocket of every citizen was made publicly and flamboyantly by the Prime Minister himself. When it was casually described only as a “chunavi jumla”, the BJP lost credibility. The betrayal of the promise to give farmers minimum support price (MSP) on the basis of 50 per cent profit over costs of production was no less stark. Equally, the dismal failure to provide two crore jobs annually, has conveyed to the youth of our country, that the BJP’s promises were linked to winning elections and not about fulfilment. In fact, the creation of jobs has fallen to the lowest level in six years.
The formation of the government in Jammu and Kashmir with the Peoples’ Democratic Party was the second demonstration of the ideological barrenness of the ruling party. It was clear from the very beginning that the BJP and the PDP have nothing in common, and are in fact ideologically opposed to each other. Still, for the sake of power, the BJP formed a government that has been inherently unstable from the very beginning leaving a sensitive state like J&K in flames.
A third factor is the money power that the BJP is able to bring into electoral politics. This was very much in evidence in the recent Bihar Assembly elections. A fleet of helicopters was on call. Entire floors of expensive hotels were booked for its leaders. Leading newspapers had multiple, full pages of party advertisements. It seemed that the amount of resources the BJP could plough into elections was without a ceiling.
Bihar and other elections also brought to the fore another aspect: the cynical use of communal polarisation to divide people for short-term political gain. Campaigns such as “ghar wapsi”, “love jihad” and beef ban were used with impunity to sow hatred and division and whip up suspicion against other communities. Senior functionaries of the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliate organisations made a series of communally incendiary statements with no action being taken against them. The deliberate perversion of ideology was used to create an atmosphere of social instability and intolerance that has made a mockery of the slogan “Sabka saath, sabka vikas”.
Parliament too has witnessed this arrogance of power. Perhaps no other ruling party has such a poor record of reaching out to the Opposition with a view to reaching a constructive consensus on important issues and bills, including the goods and services tax (GST). Furthermore, we are witnessing an organised campaign to unhinge the carefully devised structure of Parliament by the BJP’s attempt to devalue the role of the Rajya Sabha where the party is in a minority. Recently, we have seen a design to designate non-money bills as money bills so that the legislative competence of the Upper House can be bypassed.
All of the above developments help to explain why the BJP acted in the manner it did in Arunachal Pradesh and, more recently, in Uttarakhand. The direct takeaway is that we are now dealing with a party which believes that as a matter of right it can, on the basis of a transient majority in the Lok Sabha, act in any matter it wishes without reference to either ethics, principles, legality or the Constitution.
Power should normally acquaint those who wield it with responsibility. When this does not happen, the nation witnesses what happened in Uttarakhand. That is why, to my mind, Uttarakhand will be remembered not only for its blatant violation of democracy and the principles of the Constitution, but also for the sheer hubris of power.
Author-diplomat Pavan K. Varma is a Rajya Sabha member
