India's National Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

Vol. 16 :: No. 05 :: Feb. 27 - Mar. 12, 1999

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COVER STORY

A DISMISSAL BACKFIRES

The Proclamation of President's Rule in Bihar has landed the BJP-led Government in deep trouble following the Congress(I)'s decision, after a period of vacillation, to oppose it in Parliament.

VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN
in New Delhi

"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED," Samata Party spokesperson Digvijay Singh exulted on the night of February 12 as news of the imposition of President's Rule in Bihar spread in the national capital. For Digvijay Singh, his leaders George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar as well as for Bharatiya Janata Party stalwarts such as Home Minister L.K. Advani, the presidential proclamation that came around 9 p.m. marked the culmination of frenzied activity that had peaked on the evening of February 11. It was a campaign with the sole purpose of getting the Rabri Devi-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Government dismissed.

However, developments in the next 10 days proved that the rejoicing was premature.

MUNNA SHARMA
Rashtriya Janata Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav, wife Rabri Devi and their supporters staging a demonstration in Patna on February 15 to protest the dismissal of the RJD Government. The game plan of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samata Party in dismissing the RJD Government has backfired following the Congress(I)'s decision to oppose in Parliament the Proclamation for President's Rule.

On the evening of February 22, the Congress(I) Working Committee (CWC) put an end to the party's vacillation on the Bihar question and decided that it would oppose the BJP-led Government's move to secure Parliament's ratification for the presidential proclamation. Congress(I) leader Arjun Singh told presspersons in New Delhi after a three-hour-long informal meeting of the CWC that the meeting unanimously decided to vote against the proclamation in Parliament. Developments within the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which supports the Government from outside, also pointed to its determination to oppose the BJP-Samata Party-sponsored dismissal of the Rabri Devi Government.

The RJD and its partner in the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha (RLM), the Samajwadi Party (S.P.), were jubilant at the turn of events. Clearly, with the Congress(I) and the SAD having joined the RLM, the Left parties, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) in their opposition to the dismissal of the Bihar Government, there was no way the Central Government could garner the necessary support to get the presidential proclamation ratified by Parliament within the stipulated period of two months.

The inability to do this is bound to nullify the dismissal automatically, and with the Assembly having been kept in suspended animation the reinstatement of the RJD Government is a possibility, at least theoretically. At any rate, the great gain of February 12 had backfired, causing a major embarrassment for the ruling coalition. And, in this changed atmosphere, there was speculation in political circles in New Delhi that the coalition itself would break up leading to the fall of the Vajpayee Government during the Budget session of Parliament. The session commenced on February 22.

V. SUDERSHAN
President K.R. Narayanan. The February 12 resolution of the Council of Ministers recommending the dismissal was a reiteration of the September 1998 resolution and constitutionally the President had no alternative but to give his assent to it.

Whether the government falls or not, it has now become clear that one of the most important political assignments taken up by the leaders of the BJP and the Samata Party since March 1998, when they came to power at the Centre, has boomeranged. The leaders of the two parties had pursued for 11 months the objective of removing the RJD Government, employing various means. The previous major effort was mounted in the last week of September 1998, after Governor Sunder Singh Bhandari gave a report indicating rampant deterioration of law and order in the State. Consequently, the Union Cabinet recommended the invocation of Article 356 of the Constitution against the RJD Government on the grounds that it had failed to protect the constitutional machinery.

However, President K.R. Narayanan sent the Cabinet resolution back on September 25, making it clear that "the condition precedent for the invocation of Article 356 has not been adequately made out". The Presidential Minute pointed to Article 256 of the Constitution, which enables the Centre to issue warnings to State governments in order to ensure compliance with law. The clear indication of this reference was that the Union Government had not taken recourse to such mandatory warnings before moving a resolution for the imposition of President's Rule. "The absence of such warnings," the President recorded in the Minute, "which would have alerted the State Government to its constitutional responsibilities, is an infirmity in the (Union Government's) proposal."

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Bihar Governor Sunder Singh Bhandari at the New Delhi railway station on February 18, a day after he left Patna, threatening to resign in response to a statement by Union Home Minister L.K. Advani.

Stung by this reverse, the BJP-Samata Party combination waited for four and a half months before launching the next phase of the Bihar operation. This phase witnessed acts of extreme political skulduggery and fraudulence. The Cabinet resolution of September was reiterated to the President, which left him with no choice but to accept it. In reality, within the four and a half months the objective socio-political situation had probably changed to an even greater degree than in Bihar in States such as Gujarat and Orissa, ruled by the BJP and the Congress(I) respectively. Opposition parties as well as independent observers pointed out that in Gujarat and Orissa, tribal people and Christian missionaries were under attack as never before. However, in their quest for political supremacy in a politically important State in the Hindi heartland, leaders of the Government, particularly those of the BJP and the Samata Party, chose to ignore such truths.

However, it is also true that a variety of new factors helped the Atal Behari Vajpayee Government to achieve its original objective. Broadly, there were four factors at play. First, Article 74 of the Constitution makes it imperative for the President to give assent to any advice given to him and reiterated thereafter by the Council of Ministers. Article 74, which gives the President the right to urge the Council of Ministers to reconsider any such advice, also ordains that he is bound to accept any advice "tendered after such reconsideration". The February 12 resolution of the Council of Ministers was technically a reiteration of the proposal made in September and the President had, constitutionally, no alternative but to give his assent to it.

SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR
Advani's statement that the Centre was considering giving a "non-partisan, apolitical administration in Bihar" triggered a controversy.

Secondly, the President's perception with regard to the law and order situation in Bihar seems to have undergone a transformation. According to highly placed sources close to the Home Ministry, unlike on September 25 - when the President returned the earlier Cabinet resolution - he was satisfied this time around that warnings had indeed been sent to the State Government under Article 256 and that they were not heeded. According to a senior government leader, the Minute attached to the February 12 proclamation of the President is a clear indicator of this changed stance.

Sources close to Rashtrapati Bhavan said that the President was deeply perturbed by the Shankarbigha and Narayanpur massacres and this impelled him to attach a one-page Minute to the February 12 proclamation. After the Shankarbigha massacre he took the unusual step of issuing a public statement calling for "stringent action" against the culprits. It was obvious that although the President does not see himself as an inquiring judge, he is upset by the ghastly incidents. A memorial submitted by the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) after the Shankarbigha massacre and the interaction that he had with the party's leadership had apparently weighed on the President's mind.

Representatives of the CPI(M-L) delegation who met the President told Frontline that they had informed him about the Ranvir Sena's threats to repeat Shankarbigha-type massacres and that some leaders of the Sena had even identified the villages targeted for the next round. "We told him that the Government, instead of protecting Dalits, was disarming the oppressed communities, thus rendering them helpless in the face of upper-caste attacks," a member of the delegation said. The massacre in Narayanpur bore out the warnings of the CPI(M-L) delegation and apparently the President was deeply disturbed by this.

The third factor that enabled the Vajpayee Government to act in the way it wanted was the rise in the number of caste clashes and massacres in the State during the last two months and the way the RJD Government handled them, which left the Government open to the charge of callousness and administrative apathy. As the violence mounted, the Government was seen to have failed to take strong administrative measures. Politically, all that the RJD leadership used to say was that the Ranvir Sena was close to the BJP and the Samata Party. While this accusation is largely true and goes with the pro-BJP socio-political character of the Sena, it holds no justification for administrative failures to protect Dalits and other oppressed classes.

Fourthly, the change in the attitude of the Congress(I), the party on whose support the RJD Government depended for survival, in the wake of the Shankarbigha and Narayanpur massacres, helped the Centre. Visiting Bihar after the Narayanpur massacre, Congress(I) president Sonia Gandhi said that the Rabri Government had lost the moral authority to rule. The situation created by all these factors was exploited by the BJP and the Samata Party in the latest operation to achieve their objective. Their leaders had seen the changed stance of the Congress(I) as a guarantee that the presidential proclamation would be ratified by Parliament. The Congress(I) now seems to have shattered their hopes.

It is debatable whether the BJP and the Samata Party would have embarked on an adventurist course of this kind had it not been for the perceived change in the Congress(I)'s stance in the first week of February. While some Samata Party leaders claim that they were misled by Sonia Gandhi's discord with the RJD Government, some others say that in any case something drastic had to be done as pressure was mounting from the State units of their party and the BJP.

DEEPAK KUMAR
On a visit to Narayanpur on February 13, Congress(I) president Sonia Gandhi with relatives of victims of the massacre by the Ranvir Sena on February 10.

The situation was all the more difficult for the Samata Party, whose rank and file had been fed on the promise that they would get a share in power in the State once the RJD was removed from power. This promise was repeated by the leadership so many times in the last one year that lower-level leaders had started expressing scepticism over it. The Samata Party leadership's discomfiture was compounded by the perception in the middle and lower levels of the party that only their leadership was failing to get State-specific demands implemented while other allies of the BJP, such as the SAD, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the Trinamul Congress were having their way. The perceived gains made by AIADMK leader Jayalalitha, cases against whom have been transferred out of special courts, and the announcement of the so-called Bengal package at the insistence of Trinamul Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, were held out as cases in point. Desertions had begun from Samata Party units across the State; more than 100 local leaders have left the party since the beginning of the year.

It was at this juncture that the Shankarbigha and Narayanpur massacres took place. The sharp reactions that the incidents invited from different sections convinced BJP and Samata Party leaders that they should not miss the opportunity to gain political mileage from them. After the Narayanpur massacre, Samata Party leaders, including George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar, bluntly told the BJP that they would be forced to resort to harsh measures unless the RJD Government was dismissed. The BJP, already threatened with withdrawal of support by parties such as the Om Prakash Chautala-led Indian National Lok Dal, did not want to risk further trouble, particularly on the eve of the Budget session.

IN the 24 hours from the evening of February 11, BJP and Samata Party leaders went into overdrive on the Bihar front. First, an extraordinary Cabinet meeting was called at midnight. A note was prepared for the Prime Minister - who was in Jamaica - seeking his go-ahead in recommending President's Rule. The meeting continued until 1-30 a.m. and was followed by another, barely four hours later. Once the Prime Minister cleared the proposal, a special messenger was sent to the President, who was in Calcutta. President Narayanan signed the proclamation around 9 p.m. on February 12.

Source: Annexure to the CPI(M-L) memorial given to President K.R. Narayanan, dated February 1, 1999, a copy of which was made available to Frontline by the CPI(M-L); and press reports. Note: Killings of Dalit and oppressed rural poor people were reported also from some of the other incidents of violence perpetrated by the Ranvir Sena.

After the proclamation came, leaders of the ruling coalition claimed that they were sure that there would be no presidential rebuff this time around as the Central Government was on strong ground. A senior Minister, who was actively involved in "Operation Bihar", claimed that by attaching a Minute to the proclamation the President had virtually nullified the reservations he had expressed on the recommendation made in September. However, while it could be argued that the President's second Minute was not entirely consistent with the position that he took in the Minute of September 25, there is no indication that it amounted to a "nullification" of his earlier "reservations", as claimed by leaders of the BJP-led coalition. Sources close to Rashtrapati Bhavan told Frontline that a Minute was attached with the presidential proclamation of February 12 precisely to prevent this type of misinterpretation.

Now, in the wake of the Congress(I)'s February 22 decision, many Samata Party leaders lament that the entire debate on the President coming around to their view has lost meaning. According to them, the confusion among Opposition parties such as the Janata Dal on the ratification question - the Janata Dal may support the Central Government motion because many of its leaders, including Ram Vilas Paswan and Sharad Yadav, have from time to time demanded the dismissal of the RJD Government on various counts - would not help their cause to any significant extent.

Opposition forces such as the DMK, the TMC, the S.P. and the Left parties staunchly oppose the dismissal and have formed a united front. The Left parties, which had reservations about the functioning of the RJD Government, made it clear that the issues of misrule and federal principles could not be mixed up. "The Left has consistently taken up the fight against Article 356 as a draconian measure violating Centre-State relations," A.B. Bardhan, Communist Party of India general secretary, told Frontline (see also interview with Sitaram Yechury).

SANJAY KUMAR
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya (bearded) leads a march in Patna on January 30 to protest against the massacre in Shankarbigha. In a memorial given to the President on February 1, the CPI (M-L) detailed the Ranvir Sena's massacres over the years and the failure of the administration to protect the lives of Dalits despite having been forewarned.

It is evident that the BJP and the Samata Party have botched this round. Killings continued in Bihar after the dismissal of the RJD Government, with four persons burnt alive near Patna and seven shot dead in Jehanabad barely 48 hours after the imposition of President's Rule. An unseemly controversy broke out also over replacing the State Governor. And now comes the lethal blow from the Congress(I).

As several leaders of the two parties admit in private, right from the beginning the BJP and Samata Party leaderships had no clue as to what exactly the long-term political benefits of the dismissal would be. It is possible, some of them say, that the RJD might emerge stronger in the hustings by playing the martyr. Signs of this are already evident in the popular response to the RJD's calls to protest against the dismissal. If the RJD grows in strength and stature, the February exercise of the Vajpayee Government could well be a re-enactment of the September drama.