It is evident that Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa’s term in office suffers from a serious infirmity. It has been challenged on the issue of deep-going corruption not only by the Congress and JD(S) — the state Opposition — but also by significant sections of the ruling BJP, who had recently risen in revolt. It will be straining
credulity to imagine that the chief minister has not come under the needle of suspicion. In granting sanction for the chief minister’s prosecution to two lawyers on Friday, it is not unlikely that governor H.R. Bhardwaj was motivated by political considerations, as the BJP has said accusingly. What matters, however, is that there appears little doubt that the governor is within his constitutional right to accord permission — even to private entities — to prosecute the chief minister. Only recently the Supreme Court held that it was perfectly in order for Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy to prosecute former telecom minister A. Raja. The Karnataka Lokayukta, former Supreme Court judge K.S. Hegde, has publicly endorsed the view that Mr Bhardwaj had not transgressed constitutional propriety in permitting the chief minister’s prosecution for corruption and related matters.
The Congress and the UPA government may be unhappy about the BJP running governments in several states. But the ruling party at the Centre has not initiated any move to topple any BJP state government since the UPA first came to power in 2004. Perhaps it can also be argued that it is hard for coalition governments at the Centre to scheme to send inconvenient state governments packing, as was fairly common in another era when single-party majority was the norm. Therefore, if Mr Yeddyurappa’s government is now being asked to establish its credentials on the corruption issue in a court of law, the chief minister and his party can do with some self-introspection. After all, it is not so long ago that the BJP national leadership itself appeared keen to remove Mr Yeddyurappa from his position but did not know how to go about doing this, and was eventually persuaded by political factors on the ground to stay its hand.
In the wider debate, it needs to be remembered that it is not unprecedented for a governor to allow the prosecution of a chief minister. In the early Eighties, A.R. Antulay, the Maharashtra chief minister from the Congress party, was hauled up before the law following the governor’s sanction in the wake of the so-called cement scandal. He was convicted by the Bombay high court in January 1982 and had no option but to resign at that stage. Two decades later Mr Antulay cleared his name in the Supreme Court. It has been erroneously suggested that the Karnataka governor should have waited for the report of the Lokayukta and the Justice Padmaraj Commission — which are concerned with the alleged land-related dealings of the chief minister — before according sanction for prosecution. This is no requirement at all. Besides, there is serious concern that the Padmaraj Commission was set up by the state government to torpedo the labours of the Lokayukta, whose energetic pace in several other matters had unnerved the Karnataka government.
It will be no surprise if the BJP steps up its agitation against the governor and the Centre to protest the action of the former. This is likely to negatively impact the Budget Session of Parliament scheduled to begin in February. The UPA-II government must take every care that none of its political moves is construed as being part of a toppling game in Karnataka. The matter will soon be in a law court. The question of the chief minister’s culpability should be decided on merits, not by the hurling of political accusations and the expression of populist outrage.