Deja vu

A leopard might change its spots, but not the Congress party. Ever since it has come back to power at the head of the United Progressive Alliance, the government in its single-minded pursuit of handing over power to the Congress or its allies, has committed one constitutional contretemps after another.

First there was that business in Goa, then in Jharkhand and now there is Bihar. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Cabinet decision to dissolve the Assembly last May, even before it had met, was unconstitutional. But it has also said that the new set of elections, which the dissolution occasioned, must go on.

Lalu Prasad, who had held a gun to the central government's head and forced the dissolution, is claiming that the second part of the Court's judgement vindicates the decision to dissolve. He has no use for the first part, but the NDA, which may have formed a government last May, has been focusing on it.

For this the court has only itself to blame. This ruling resembles the one by Justice Krishna Iyer in June 1975. As the vacation judge, he upheld the Allahabad High Court's ruling setting aside Indira Gandhi's election in 1971 for electoral malpractice. But he allowed her to retain her seat in parliament without voting rights. The result was an avoidable anomaly. In the instant case, too, the effect of the first part is to nullify the Cabinet decision. Technically, this must mean that the earlier Assembly never ceased to exist.

But the latter part of the judgement is rooted in the law which says that, once under way, the electoral process must go on, and therefore upholds its dissolution. This is not unlike Schroedinger's Cat, which was both dead and alive, and whether it was one or the other depended on the observer.

It is not only this strange judgement that will raise questions. Three other issues need to be resolved. Two are political, one is embarrassing. The first pertains to the role of Sonia Gandhi; the second to the 11 pm Cabinet meeting; and the third, the embarrassing one, to the President's role.

The decision to dissolve simply could not have been taken without Ms Gandhi's consent, as indeed the ones in respect of Goa and Jharkhand could not have. What is she up to? Does she have regard for the Constitution? If so, the time has surely come to demonstrate it. It would be wrong to just blame the Governor, Buta Singh.

He is guilty, of course, but the way these things are manipulated, he is not a free agent. As for the second question, about the lateness of the hour at which the Cabinet met to recommend dissolution: what was the hurry, other than Lalu Prasad's terror that Nitish Kumar had put together enough of a majority and was about to demonstrate it on the floor of the House, as required both by the Constitution and the law laid down by the Supreme Court in the S R Bommai case? And then there is the unseemly haste shown by the President, not unlike Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed in 1975.

Why could Mr Kalam not have waited by sending the advice back to the Cabinet for reconsideration, as he is entitled to do? All in all, this is a shabby episode. What causes additional worry is that it has become a pattern.