March 9, 1998

Governor Romesh Bhandari's questionable action ushers in a return of the horse-trading culture in the state's politics. Governance has been the casualty

By Farzand Ahmed and Subhash Mishra

Lucknow is no stranger to the politics of intrigue. Yet, even by its illustrious standards, February 21 was a remarkable day. Not since the Great Mutiny of 1857 had Avadh witnessed such a silent revolt, not in a century and a half had its rulers been so surprised by a coup.

The day dawned quietly. Kalyan Singh, seemingly well-ensconced as the BJP's chief minister, was 275 km away in Gorakhpur preparing for the next day's Lok Sabha election. In the afternoon, Rajnath Singh, the BJP's state unit chief, held a luncheon press conference to boast about his party's poll prospects. It wasn't the last press conference to be called that day.

Around the time Rajnath was bragging eloquently, the bsp's Mayawati too was addressing journalists. The polling in her constituency of Ambedkar Nagar was over and she was free to concentrate on overthrowing Kalyan, she said. An hour later, Mulayam Singh Yadav, president of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and long-time enemy of both Kalyan and Mayawati, decided to confide in the fourth estate. If Mayawati was ready, so was he: the BJP regime could be brought down the same evening. That is exactly what happened.

At 2 p.m., Mayawati led her partymen, Loktantrik Congress Party (LCP) MLAs -- partners in the Kalyan-led coalition -- and an assortment of Congress, SP, Bharatiya Kisan Kaamgar Party and Janata Dal (Rajaram group) legislators to Raj Bhavan. They informed Governor Romesh Bhandari that the LCP's Jagdambika Pal, transport minister in Kalyan's cabinet, was their leader and commanded a majority in the Assembly.

The trusting Bhandari took them at face value. By 5 p.m., Kalyan had rushed to Lucknow and was trying to convince the Governor that he could prove his majority. To no avail. At 10.16 p.m. Bhandari swore in Pal as the new chief minister amid thunderous cheers from non-BJP legislators. Everyone seemed to be in a bit of a hurry, including the Governor. That perhaps explains why the Raj Bhavan staff forgot to play the national anthem at the end of the ceremony.

The battle was over; but the war had only just begun. At about the moment Pal was taking his oath, Narendra Kumar Singh Gaur, one of Kalyan's ministers, was petitioning the Allahabad High Court. While Justice N.K. Saith reserved the Governor's order dismissing the BJP government, Justice Birendra Dixit reserved his decision. A day and a half later, at 3 p.m. on February 23, Dixit concurred with Saith and sought to reinstate Kalyan. Two hours later, Kalyan was back in the state secretariat in Lucknow. Pal remained seated in the chief minister's chair despite being taunted as a "trespasser". He moved the Supreme Court, which asked for the Assembly to be convened for a "composite floor test". That, of course, took place on February 26. MLAs were effectively asked to choose between Kalyan and Pal, seated on either side of the Speaker.

In the end Kalyan won. He needed 213 votes to prove his superiority in the 425-member House; he got 12 more than that. The hapless Pal, by then bereft of his most vociferous supporters, had to be content with 196 votes. It was a nine-hour process, as the MLAs voted under the gaze of 16 video cameras. It was also one of the calmest assembly sessions in recent memory. When it concluded, Speaker Kesri Nath Tripathi was moved (and astonished) enough to thank the members for maintaining order.

Less than a week after they had been snatched away from him, the reins of administration were back in Kalyan's hands. All had ended well but it had been seven days of drama, of pathos -- and bathos.

Some of it was visible in the Assembly on the day of the composite test. Mayawati, Congress leader Pramod Tiwari and sp's Dhaniram Verma -- all of whom had played a key role in the violent session of October 21, 1997, when Kalyan had sought an earlier confidence vote -- were rather quiet on this day. Tiwari's only complaint was that he could not comprehend the Supreme Court's order as it was in English. The Speaker spent 45 minutes translating it into Hindi.

Other noteworthy happenings involved the five MLAs, four of them from the BSP, jailed under the National Security Act but allowed to attend the special session to decide upon their chief minister. For a meeting called at the culmination of great acrimony, there was much camaraderie on view. First Pal walked up to Naresh Agarwal -- chief of the LCP who had masterminded the anti-Kalyan coup, made Pal chief minister, then reversed stance, ditched him and rushed back into Kalyan's camp, all in a matter of days. Despite having played Brutus more than once, Agarwal was considered worthy of a hug by Pal. Perhaps that was Pal's manner of thanking his former mentor for having made him chief minister for all of 31 hours.

Next, Pal strolled across to Kalyan, put his arm on the competitor's shoulder and whispered into his ear. It would have been touching stuff but for the fact that these were the characters who had held India's most populous state to ransom for a week.

It was a week in which political theatre was at its most emotive, with Bhandari becoming the cause of the sharpest polarisation between the BJP and its principal rivals since the Babri Masjid. Atal Bihari Vajpayee went on a "fast unto death", only to end it when a court ruling seemed to vindicate his party. The President wrote to the prime minister virtually accusing Bhandari of insubordination for dismissing Kalyan against Rashtrapati Bhavan's wishes. Finally, in evolving the composite floor test, the judiciary interpreted the Constitution in a most innovative fashion.

All this is now history; what remains is the mystery. Why did the coup take place when it did? To many, the needle of suspicion pointed in one direction: Mulayam Singh Yadav. Sambhal, the Lok Sabha seat Mulayam's contesting from, went to the polls on February 22.

Did Mulayam agree to the grand anti-BJP coalition essentially for a one-day operation, a day on which he could ensure that the local officialdom in Sambhal favoured him or, at worst, remained neutral? D.P. Yadav, his BJP-backed rival, certainly thinks so. He has accused the SP of rigging.

Bureaucrats in Lucknow speak of how Pal sat through his first night at the helm of the government overseeing a police crackdown on Mulayam's opponents in Sambhal. In the constituency itself, Amar Singh, SP general secretary and Mulayam's lieutenant, led the poll-eve celebrations, distributing sweets and predicting victory as news of Kalyan's removal arrived.

Sunday, February 22, saw orderly polling in Sambhal, with an astounding 73 per cent of the voters exercising their franchise. Pal was quick to congratulate himself: "Credit goes to me for having conducted the second round of polling in a peaceful manner. I sat the whole night monitoring the movement of officials and police to ensure peaceful and fair polling the next day." Was this admission of a collusion with Mulayam in a manoeuvre as breathtaking as it was audacious?

Whatever the truth, the fact is trouble had been brewing in Kalyan's backyard for months. A little after Pal became chief minister, a triumphant Tiwari announced: "I have been saying that while the elections will be held under one government (parts of the state voted on February 16), counting of votes will take place under another government. If nobody understood, what can I say?" He was right. Nobody had understood. Not Kalyan, not Rajnath, not any of the BJP's self-appointed Chanakyas.

In fact, there is a theory that Kalyan was asking for trouble. As chief minister, he resorted to hard bargaining with allies from what may not have been, in retrospect, a position of strength. LCP leaders like Pal and Harishankar Tiwary -- once the terror of eastern Uttar Pradesh -- and Rajaram Pandey -- chief of the breakaway JD -- had sought Lok Sabha tickets for their relatives. Kalyan had waved them away. Agarwal, who had brought about the rupture in the Congress and led his 22 MLAs into Kalyan's arms only four months ago, was smarting. He was energy minister but decisions about his department where taken without his knowledge.

On her part, Mayawati was seething. A pathological dislike for Kalyan apart, she was angry with the Speaker. He had not addressed her demand that the 12 BSP MLAs who joined Kalyan's ministry in October -- and were crucial to its survival -- be disqualified under the Anti-Defection Act. Further, Mulayam, Mayawati and N.D. Tiwari (former chief minister and Congress nominee for Nainital) felt Kalyan was singling them out for humiliation and going overboard in his attempt to defeat them. This may have been another cause for an immediate alliance.

The general election may have been the catalyst but the plotting had begun much earlier. Amar Singh had first tried to win over Agarwal in December. Interestingly, it was around then that Mayawati wrote to the governor suggesting that Kalyan was heading a minority government. In the middle of January came the second foray. Amar Singh was again in the thick of things. He met LCP ministers in Delhi, opened communication between Pal and the BSP and began wooing Pandey. A month later, the pieces fell into place.

Of course, none of it would have happened without the complicity of the governor. Not since the communists took on Dharam Vira in West Bengal three decades ago has a party's relationship with a governor been as adversarial as the BJP's with Bhandari (see box). Bhandari tried to justify his action by pointing to "the precedent created by my predecessor Motilal Vora", who in 1995 had sacked Mulayam without calling an assembly session.

Nevertheless, the judicial frown, the presidential anguish, the politico-constitutional storm he has wrought -- and Vora's own discounting of any comparison between the '95 and '98 dismissals -- have forced Bhandari onto the backfoot. It hasn't helped that Vivek Singh, an LCP MLA who joined the Pal ministry only to counter-defect, has charged that the governor tired to "persuade" him not to go back to Kalyan's camp.

The politicisation of its governor is, however, the least of Uttar Pradesh's problems. Its principal worry is the politicisation of its governance. With three chief ministers in less than six months -- and each more concerned than the next with splitting other parties -- the province is far away from sound management. Sadly, this distance may only grow. With a mid-term assembly election now inevitable, consolidation is going to be Kalyan's priority -- administration be damned.

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