In the highest echelons of governance in the Union Territory of Puducherry, where two’s not always perfect company, three’s potential mutiny.
In the delicate balance of power prevailing in the legislature-equipped Union Territory, the Lt. Governor is at the helm as the Administrator; the Chief Minister and his Council of Ministers are deemed to call the shots as far as day to day decision-making goes, while the Chief Secretary, whose cadre-controlling authority is the Ministry of Home Affairs, too needs to play ball within the triad to ensure smooth sailing for governance.
While more often than not, the occupants of the high offices have operated within the bounds of Constitutional red lines — it has also helped that Congress regimes have ruled synchronously at the Centre and in the UT for long periods — there have in the past been legendary tussles between the Lt. Governor and the elected Ministry and even the Chief Minister and his Chief Secretary.
Chequered history The blow hot-blow cold relations between Lt. Governor Kiran Bedi and Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy have opened another chapter in the chequered history of troubled relations between the powers that be in the Union Territory.
Kiran Bedi, the country’s first woman IPS officer was sworn in as the 23rd Lt. Governor of Puducherry in May this year, succeeding Lt. Gen. A.K. Singh, the Lt. Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands who was holding additional charge of Puducherry. She came to Puducherry with the workaholic mode switched on.
One of the first things she did was to throw open the gates of the Raj Nivas to the public, holding open house sessions to listen to their grievances. The L-G reserved Sunday mornings for field inspections, once even joining conservancy workers in cleaning the polluted Grand Canal that criss-crosses the town, and continues to hold regular conferences with the police top brass and department officials.
Ms. Bedi’s proactive style marked by a people-centric and reform-driven approach quickly caught the imagination of the public. If at all he was annoyed by these developments, Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy, seasoned politician that he is, has been careful not to let a whiff of it out in public. After all, his most pressing priority at the moment would be to get elected within a six-month window from a safe seat.
Both Ms. Bedi and Mr. Narayanasamy, in their public posturing, have been maintaining that they work in tandem to make Puducherry prosperous, clean and peaceful.
Mr. Narayanasamy, though, did convene a high-level meeting of officials a couple of weeks ago to spell out the provisions laid out in the Rules of Business of the Government of Pondicherry 1963 mandated through a Presidential notification in exercise of the powers conferred by Article 239 and the proviso Article 309 of the Constitution.
The Chief Minister’s diktat to the officials was to strictly adhere to the rules and regulations in moving files out of the Secretariat or in taking decisions. At this meeting, Mr. Narayanasamy is reported to have ticked off officials on certain practices, specifically issuance of orders through apps such as WhatsApp.
Where the L-G is needed He told officials that the L-G’s concurrence was mandatory for 13 items listed in the Rules of Business while other matters can be decided by the Council of Ministers.
According to the rules, cases which shall be submitted to the Administrator through the Chief Minister before the issue of orders, include those that raise questions of policy, which are likely to affect peace and tranquillity, those that are likely to affect the interests of any minority community, SCs and Backward Classes and those which affect the relations of the Government of UT with any State Government or the judiciary.
“In essence, the considered view was that while the office of the Administrator could intervene and stop any proposal within the clearly defined purview, day-to-day decision-making rested with the Government and any file can be moved from the Secretariat only through established procedures,” a highly-placed source privy to the proceedings had told The Hindu .
A few days later, after the Delhi High Court order upholding the supremacy of the Lt. Governor in Delhi, Mr. Narayanasamy told reporters that the Constitutional provisions relating to the Union Territory of Puducherry and New Delhi were totally different even while he maintained that the elected ministry in Puducherry and the L-G shared cordial relations.
M. Ramadass, former MP, says that the Constitutional provisions relating to the functions of L-G and CM are the same both in Delhi and Puducherry.
“The major difference between Delhi and Puducherry is that in the case of Delhi key subjects like public order, police, land and revenue are vested with the Government of India, while they are devolved on the Union Territory Government in the case of Puducherry,” he said.
Top bureaucrats who get a posting in Puducherry will vouch that managing the power equations between the occupants of high office is no easy matter. Some power struggles have happened in the secrecy of closed rooms while others have spilled out in the form of ugly public spats.
Ugly spat Two years ago, bad blood flowed when Virendra Kataria as L-G locked horns with the then Chief Minister N. Rangasamy. It was an extended showdown that virtually brought development to a standstill in Puducherry and eventually led to the sacking of the L-G in July 2014, soon after the BJP Government assumed power.
“Good governance warrants that the authorities act within their domain,” Mr. Ramadass, the former MP, said.
