With the debate over whether Governors should quit with a change of the guard at the Centre, legal opinion is divided on whether “active” politicians should be accommodated in gubernatorial posts in the first place.
The Constituent Assembly Debates record a dialogue between Jawaharlal Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar, Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee, on whether it is proper to appoint a politician Governor.
“On the whole, it probably would be desirable to have people from outside — eminent people, sometimes people who have not taken too great a part in politics … he would nevertheless represent before the public someone slightly above the party and thereby, in fact, help that government more than if he was considered as part of the party machine,” Nehru says.
Dr. Ambedkar replies that “If the Constitution remains in principle the same as we intend, then it should be that the Governor should be a purely constitutional Governor.”
The May 7, 2010 verdict of the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court acknowledges the expectation that politicians — “reputed elder statesmen, able administrators and eminent personalities with maturity and experience” — will be made Governors, but the Bench says the politicians, once they become Governors, should owe allegiance to the Constitution and not their party.
Senior advocate Harish Salve says the “practice down the line” has been reduced to a cosmetic adherence to the constitutional spirit.
Salman Khurshid, former Foreign Minister and senior lawyer, differs. “This way of looking at politics as unwholesome is not good. I can understand that a Governor could have been actively part of the political philosophy of a party ... So what should be done? Should elder politicians with maturity and experience be hung, drawn and quartered? What is happening today is against the principles of good governance and is a slip into the Presidential form of governance,” he says.
Experts seek transparency in gubernatorial appointments and premature termination of a Governor’s term. But recommendations of the Sarkaria Commission, which called upon the Centre to explain before Parliament the circumstances of premature termination and to provide the Governor an opportunity to show-cause, remain pending.
The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution had sought a committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Union Home Minister, the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Chief Minister of the State concerned to appoint Governors.
