Perils of playing with Article 356

The NDA style of making India Congress-Mukth has boomeranged, leaving the BJP red-faced. The Congress reportedly winning the floor test repudiates the claims of Team Modi that the Harish Rawat government lost majority after the rebel MLAs defected to BJP company.

The dubious politics of the Centre were frustrated with the Supreme Court firmly ruling for a floor test. The political complot of the party that rules the Centre has come into the open, uniting all the opposition parties. The Congress caught in a web of corruption deals of the past could rally non-BJP parties as it assumed the role of saviour of democracy.

Thanks to BJP’s politics of expediency, even the Congress and the BSP could come together that too before the crucial elections to Uttar Pradesh Assembly. The BJP should be credited for manufacturing such an index of opposition unity. Politically destabilising smaller States is a peril not only to democracy but even to the unity of the country.

Hoodwinking opposition-ruled governments began with Arunachal Pradesh. But, thanks to judicial activism, this unabashed operation could not sail through in Uttarakhand much to the discomfiture of BJP.

Failure to realise that tampering with Article 356 after the SR Bommai verdict reveals the political myopia of the BJP leadership. The discredited Rawat government assumed legitimacy with aborted coup by BJP. Alluring the rebels, destabilising elected governments, misusing Article 356 form the denouncement of this ugly political drama unleashed by the central government in its quest for Congress-Mukth Bharat, in the process helping the Congress play the victim card.

A tiny State faced the might of New Delhi. In all likelihood, Congress may opt for early Assembly elections to capitalise on the victim sentiment. In case the Congress is successful in doing so, the culpability for this squarely lies at the doorsteps of BJP leadership whose political machinations got frustrated.

The BJP alone is not the loser in this ugly turn of events. First time in the history of Indian Parliamentary democracy, legislature was subjected to judicial accountability. The Supreme Court directly monitored the proceedings of legislature. This weakens the role of legislature in the Constitutional frame of things.

The office of the President is discredited with acting in an undesirable manner. The President of India should have used his limited role to ascertain that the democracy is not hollowed.

All this is not to justify Congress politics in the past or present. In fact the bane of the nation is that BJP is slowly but steadily stepping into the Congress shoes. India has nothing to gain from such a Congress-Mukth Bharat.

The BJP has not just indulged in a strategic political blunder but scored a self goal by sacrificing its political morality at the altar of greed for power in States too, not content with the massive mandate the people of the country has given it.

The Congress success in floor test does not in any way legitimise its manoeuvres to cling to the power. But, ultimately the spirit of democracy won in the foothills of Himalayas.

Judiciary has once again come to the rescue of Indian democracy even when the political establishment tried to the hilt to pillage it.