 "UP Governor BL Joshi quits")
The President accepted Joshi’s resignation and gave Uttarakhand Governor Aziz Qureshi additional charge of UP.
Home ministry sources said some more whose terms were nearly ending could quit in the days to come. According to sources, the home ministry has nudged some of the governors to resign. These are Maharashtra Governor K Sankaranarayanan, Gujarat’s Kamla Beniwal, Ashwani Kumar of Nagaland, Karnataka Governor H R Bhardwaj and West Bengal Governor M K Narayanan. All the above, barring Narayanan, are former Congress leaders. Narayanan, a former Director of Intelligence Bureau during Rajiv Gandhi's tenure as prime minister, was the National Security Advisor in the UPA government.
Kerala Governor Sheila Dikshit, Karnataka’s Bhardwaj and Assam’s J B Patnaik denied reports that they had resigned. The Centre, sources said, could transfer to other states those who refuse to resign.
“If I were in their place, I would have resigned,” Home Minister Rajnath Singh said. His party colleague Subramanian Swamy said the “governors should have resigned themselves; most of them were appointed by (Congress president) Sonia Gandhi and not on merit.”
However, the Congress dug its heels, terming the move “political vendetta”, as most governors who have been targeted are either Congress leaders or bureaucrats considered close to the top leadership of the party. The Congress was emboldened by a Supreme Court order of 2010 that had advised the Centre against removing governors on arbitrary or whimsical reasons. That order, incidentally, was a result of its government in 2004 axing governors appointed by the NDA.
A BJP MP had then moved the Supreme Court to successfully argue governors weren’t employees of the Centre, to be removed on whimsical or capricious reasons.
“There is a Supreme Court ruling that governors can’t be removed on whims and caprice…Who is the home secretary to call a governor? After the Supreme Court ruling, there is ample scope for judicial challenge,” Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit tweeted. Another Congress leader P C Chacko said: “We will decide that our governors will resign or not…why are they (the Centre) worried about changing governors?”
But sources in the BJP said the Centre could still dismiss the governors, and wait for them to move court. The party was certain that at least in two instances, that of Maharashtra and Bihar, it could show the said governor indulged in rank political partisanship by appointing all nominated members of the Legislative Council from a particular party. A BJP source alleged the Maharashtra governor appointed all MLCs from the Congress.
Bihar BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi claimed Bihar Governor D Y Patil, another veteran Congressman, was a “puppet” of the Janata Dal (United) government.
Rajasthan Governor Margaret Alva met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, described as a courtesy call. Alva, who completes her five-year term in August, is understood to have not been sounded out yet. Alva is said to enjoy a good working equation with Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje Scindia.
However, Beniwal didn’t have a good rapport with Narendra Modi. Similarly, Karnataka Governor Bhardawaj had an uneasy relationship with the previous BJP government in that state. Bhardwaj and Assam Governor J B Patnaik called on President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday.
The Samajwadi Party (SP) criticised the move by the Centre to remove governors. “The Centre is trying to saffronise the country by appointing RSS and BJP men as governors in states. This is dangerous for democracy,” said its national general secretary, Naresh Agarwal.
FORCEFUL DEPARTURE?
Other governors who might also resign
- K Sankaranarayanan, Maharashtra
- Kamla Beniwal, Gujarat
- Ashwani Kumar, Nagaland
- H R Bhardwaj, Karnataka
- M K Narayanan, West Bengal