NEW DELHI, 3 July 2004 — The Congress party-led United Progressive alliance government yesterday sacked governors of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat and Goa. Those sacked were Vishnu Kant Shastri (Uttar Pradesh), Kailashpati Mishra (Gujarat), Babu Parmanand (Haryana) and Kidarnath Sahni (Goa).
All the four have Hindu extremist background and were appointed by the previous government led by the Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party.
“President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has directed that the four governors shall cease to hold office of governor of their respective states,” a terse Rashtrapati Bhawan communiqué said. It said Maharashtra Gov. Mohammed Fazal will look after Goa, Madhya Pradesh Gov. Balram Jakhar Gujarat, Punjab Gov. O.P. Verma Haryana and Uttaranchal Gov. Sudarshan Aggarwal Uttar Pradesh.
The four, as well as Rajasthan Gov. Madan Lal Khurana, have been under immense pressure to resign since the BJP-led coalition lost the April-May general election.
“The order does not have anything on Khurana,” Rashtrapati Bhawan spokesman S.M. Khan said.
Responding to the dismissal order, which comes ahead of Parliament’s budget session from Monday, the Bharatiya Janata Party said it would protest the move aggressively but revealed no immediate plans on the form of protest. “This is against the spirit of the constitution,” said former law minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley.
“There has to be a compelling reason to remove a governor — not because he belongs to a certain party or ideology.”
Congress justified the move.
“Governors are supposed to act as a bridge between the center and the states. Whenever there is a regime change at the center, governors also change,” Congress spokesman Anand Sharma said. “There is nothing unconstitutional about this,” Sharma added.
All five governors, appointed by the previous regime, had refused to resign under the directive of former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, leader of opposition in the newly elected Lok Sabha who took up their cause with the president.
“A governor has a fixed five-year term. If he is removed for constitutional reasons, then we have no objection, but it is untenable to remove him for political reasons,” Advani said.
Advani reiterated this when Home Minister Shivraj Patil reportedly spoke to him on Thursday, urging him to ask the governors to resign.
“They are not our governors. They are governors,” Advani was quoted as saying.
The UPA was equally adamant about dismissing them, saying they were more loyal to the BJP and its Hindu fundamentalist mentor Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh than the president.
Congress argued that the fact that Advani asked the governors not to resign contradicted the party’s claim they did not have political affiliations.
“If Advani and (BJP chief Venkaiah) Naidu were serious about their description of the governors as representatives of the president in the states, then who are they to advise the governors not to resign?” Sharma asked.
“The BJP is creating a needless controversy over the dismissal of governors as though it is unheard of. It has been a practice that when a new government takes office, it appoints its nominees to gubernatorial posts,” he said.
— Additional input from Indo-Asian News Service
