ANALYSIS On the eve of the Election Commission’s announcement of poll schedules for the Lok Sabha elections, the Manmohan Singh government hurriedly took its last major executive decision, appointing Sheila Dikshit as Kerala Governor.
The serving governor Nikhil Kumar has resigned and is expected to contest as the Congress candidate from the Aurangabad parliamentary seat in Bihar. But the issue and its implications are not simply limited to the political reactivation of Kumar and the rehabilitation of Dikshit. The timing of Sheila’s appointment, hours ahead of the model code of conduct coming into force, is bound to be controversial.
The move to honourably place her in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram Rajbhawan is essentially aimed at ensuring three things: First, it is yet another manifestation of the Gandhi-Nehru family’s supposed benevolent tradition of taking good care of its loyalists;
Second, it provides a constitutional shield to Dikshit against criminal cases that might be registered against her in due course, following investigations in the Commonwealth Games scam and irregularities in the Delhi Technological University admissions;
Third, It ensures that both Dikshit and everything related to her 15 year long tenure, including scams and in-house political alignments, are safely out of the picture in the run up to parliamentary elections.
Her son Sandeep Dikshit however, is set to contest from East Delhi on a Congress ticket. Article 361(2) in of the Constitution states: “no criminal proceedings whatsoever shall be instituted or continued against the President or the Governor of a State, in any court during his term of office”. That shield, however, may be lost if the next government at the centre, which will assume office by the third week of May decides to remove her, just as the UPA government had done a decade ago with all the NDA government’s appointees.
But that is all in the realm of conjecture. For now, Dikshit enjoys constitutional immunity, however vociferously her opponents may scream against her. Dikshit faces graft charges in relation to the CWG scam and for irregularities in Delhi Technological University admissions. The latter relate to the 2012 DTU recruitment process in connection to the vacancies advertised in December 2011.
In a recent order the Delhi high court had said Dikshit would have to defend herself in a graft case and did not allow the Delhi government to pursue a 2013 appeal filed by her administration against a trial court order that ordered an FIR against her. Shortly before Arvind Kejriwal resigned as Delhi chief minister, he moved the high court on behalf of the government, asking to take back the appeal filed by the then Congress government headed by Dikshit.
The Kejriwal government’s argument was that Dikshit would have to defend herself as she was no more the CM and the government lacked the locus standi to fight for her. The political fallout of the UPA government’s 'last move' is bound to be shrill and add more fodder to an already bitter campaign. Just as the Congress party brass was busy finding ways for Dikshit’s rehabilitation, the BJP was working overtime to steal its political thunder by way of stitching small alliances.
After the Election Commission announces its poll schedule later today, the BJP is expected to announce a tie-up with Vijayakanth’s DMDK in Tamil Nadu. It has already come to an understanding with the MDMK and PMK. The DMDK entering into NDA’s fold will be a big morale booster. An alliance with the DMDK, which will come only days after BJP formally stitched an alliance with Ramvilas Paswan has sent out a message that Narendra Modi has succeeded in generating a 'wave', at least in terms of the BJP looking for allies, from South to Eastern India.
In Maharastra, even as the Shiv Sena cried foul over Nitin Gadkari’s highly publicised meet with MNS chief Raj Thackeray, senior BJP leaders were optimistic that a deal between the two estranged brothers, Raj and Uddhav Thackery could still be brokered. Gadkari had asked Raj not to field any candidate in the Lok Sabha elections, so as to consolidate all the anti Congress-NCP votes in Maharashtra.
Sources said Raj had promised Gadkari that he would give serious thought to his proposal, but now a rather bitter reaction from Sena has temporarily halted building up of a grand alliance. Jilted by both Ram Vilas Paswan and K Chandrashekar Rao’s Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), the Congress is now focusing on somehow salvaging a proposed alliance with Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar, even if it means bowing to some difficult terms put up by the wily RJD chief.
Bereft of major alliances that had been its forte in 2004 and 2009, the Congress has is trying hard to win the support of some social groups by offering community specific legislative sops, reservation to Jats in jobs and education in institutions run by central government, and make the SC-ST act more favourable to the community.
Sunday’s special union cabinet meeting was designed to beat the model code of conduct coming into effect. But thanks to President Pranab Mukherjee’s reported refusal to be a rubber stamp for the UPA government, Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders couldn’t get the game changing talking points.
It’s rather ironic that when Rahul Gandhi much hyped “anti-corruption mechanism” ordinances fall flat, a last minute notification of Sheila Dikshit’s appointment as Kerala Governor will have to be taken as a consolation prize by the brass in the outgoing UPA2.
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