With Vidhan Sabha elections approaching, Chief Minister Harish Rawat, on Sunday, hit back at the BJP’s central leadership for its “bad intentions” regarding Uttarakhand’s President’s Rule debacle in May this year.
Earlier on Saturday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had raked up the issue of President's Rule in Uttarakhand to make grounds for the BJP to come to power in the State.
“Despite Arun ji being an erudite scholar of law, how did his government make such a big mistake?” asked Mr. Rawat, speaking about Mr Jaitley’s comments on the issue and the role of the judiciary that had declared that the Central government was in the wrong by imposing President’s Rule in Uttarakhand.
“Whatever they [the BJP] had planned could not be accomplished. They [the BJP] should be far-sighted….. What the Supreme Court and the High Court stated for Uttarakhand is a guide for the future. If you misuse the powers of the Raj Bhawan [Governor] and the President, the judiciary, as a custodian of the Constitution, will definitely step forward [to protect it],” Mr Rawat said on Sunday.
Mr. Jaitley, while addressing a gathering here, had said that the State had become a corruption hub and that it needed a credible government.
Recounting the debacle, Mr. Jaitley said the situation was paradoxical since the Congress, according to him, was in minority but it was portrayed otherwise in the Courts.
“I have been a student of law and the Constitution. If I ever write anything in future a paradox included in it will be on portraying minority as majority and vice-versa and then showing it to be constitutional. It will always remain ironic for me. But, sometimes the future generations correct the mistakes of the past. And we don’t have to wait for too long since elections [in Uttarakhand] are to take place in a few months,” Mr Jaitley said.
On March 18, this year, during the Vidhan Sabha session, nine Congress MLAs had stood up against their own party and had joined the BJP in asking for a division of votes on the Appropriation Bill. The State was put under President’s Rule after Mr Jaitley had explained to President Pranab Mukherjee that the Appropriation Bill was “not passed” which meant that the State had no finances from April 1 and the President needed to take over the State’s functioning.
While legal battles followed in the Nainital High Court and later in the Supreme Court, the Centre lost and the Rawat-led Congress government returned to power in the State.
