The precedent says
no.
Simply, because it
has been the political culture in India.
Because the
reactions from the BJP leaders today said so. Let’s see what some of them said.
Ravi Shankar
Prasad, Law Minister - "We are yet
to get the order. We will study it in detail... and then make structured
response. We will do a structured examination of the order. It requires
detailed consideration. We will carefully study the judgement and its
implications." (PTI)
Shrikant Sharma,
BJP national secretary - “It is a strange
SC order as it asks the person with a majority to sit in Opposition and the one
with minority support to run the government.”
“We are yet to get
the answer.” – “We will do a structured examination of the order.”
Obsolete answers
on the worn-out lines!
And add to it the
element of oddity that tells us why there isn’t going to be much change on the
ground – in terms of bringing elements of the austere politics (well, did I say
austere?).
Another BJP
response says the ‘SC order strange”. So, it is a direct question and implies
that the party may accept as it has come from the Supreme Court, it will not
accept it in practice – when it comes to desisting from the practices that an
Arunachal Pradesh or an Uttarakhand political crisis present.
Moreover – the
game is still wide open. The Nabam Tuki government will have to prove its
majority and the wave can take any form – given the fact the next round is
going to be fought around the ‘disqualification’ issue of the 14 rebel Congress
MLAs.
And the whole
issue may again come to the top court.
But can Congress
cry foul or can take the moral high ground that it is claiming today?
Congress was
always notorious for dismissing/sacking elected governments in states and the
party has exercised/exploited these option innumerable times during its long
reign in India – some 55 years of India’s 68 independent years.
And like the
Congress party is complaining now – is crying now – all those parties did so
when their governments were thrown out of the power.
So, in a way, it
should be kind of sweet revenge – that Congress is facing something that it so
conveniently did when it had the power.
A very famous poem
that is taught in school curriculum says that those who have seen defeats in
life can only know the taste of victory.
And it applies to
the both parties here – the state run by BJP led NDA government in Centre and
the states run by Congress governments – first Arunachal Pradesh, now
Uttarakhand – and there are murmurs of same fate about Himachal Pradesh and
Manipur.
Going by the poem,
and going by the proverbial wisdom, Congress is now facing the brunt of defeats,
first electorally, and now in the name of the Constitution, and we should
rightly expect that it will do all to taste the sweet ‘taste’ of victory once
it regains the power in Delhi – either in 2019 or some other time.
But first about
the erstwhile losers – or the parties that have had very little say in running
the affairs of India – and except BJP, the only party that has had so far only
any full-term government (in fact, only single full-term government) – will
certainly be feeling more ‘justified’ in exercising this Constitutional
provision while running the country with their government installed in Delhi.
Because, when it
was its term, even Congress was always constitutionally right – irrespective of
what the common sense’ political wisdom said – irrespective of what the experts
said – and irrespective of what the Constitutional custodians, the courts,
said.
©SantoshChaubey
