Uttarakhand: The Hills Have Eyes

WHEN SHAKESPEARE wrote ‘Beware the ides of March’, he was not referring to Harish Rawat, Uttarakhand’s former Chief Minister, who isn’t much of a Caesar anyway. Yet, the Congress leadership apparently took the warning seriously in the hill state of Uttarakhand back in December 2012, when it inexplicably chose to elevate Vijay Bahuguna to the post of Chief Minister in Dehradun. In doing so, it rode roughshod over the legitimate claims of Harish Rawat to the chair. Rawat, through perseverance and strong-arm methods, managed to turn things in his favour in 2014, forcing the hand of the party high command. With just about a year left to go for the state’s Assembly polls , the back story and ominous warning appear to have come back to bite the top leadership of the Congress and Rawat, after an emergency meeting of the Union Cabinet recommended that the state be placed under President’s Rule.

In contention for power in Dehradun is the BJP. Since 2000, when Uttarakhand was first carved out as a state from Uttar Pradesh on a decision taken by the Vajpayee Government, the state has had seven chief ministers, mostly of the BJP. Only three were of the Congress: party stalwart ND Tiwari who assumed office in 2002; Vijay Bahuguna, son of another stalwart Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna and brother of UP party chief Rita Bahuguna, in 2012; and Harish Singh Rawat in 2014. In the same period, UP has had only five chief ministers. UP, a larger state, has experienced greater political stability and effective governance—one of the arguments for the tiny hill state’s formation in the first place.

The current bout of trouble began with a rebellion on the Congress benches. Led by nine MLAs, including former Chief Minister Bahuguna and Harak Singh Rawat, it put the passage of the state’s Appropriation Bill in danger during its budget session. The imposition of Central rule caught many off-guard, not least Rawat himself, especially since it came just one day ahead of the 28 March deadline set by Governor KK Pal for the Chief Minister to prove his support on the Assembly floor.

Alarmed, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice-President Rahul Gandhi rushed advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi to contest the Centre’s move in the Nainital High Court. The single-judge bench had made no comment on President’s Rule, but set a fresh deadline of 31 March for Rawat to prove his House strength—a move later ‘stayed’ by a two-judge bench until 7 April—even while ‘staying’ the disqualification of the rebel Congressmen who will now be allowed to vote on the confidence motion in secret, under the supervision of a court representative.

Irrespective of the outcome of the test of strength, if and when it is held, the BJP contends that President’s Rule cannot be undone in the interim by any court. The party is ready to approach the Supreme Court on this, if necessary. The Speaker had acted in a partisan manner by resorting to a voice vote without a division on the Appropriation Bill, BJP holds, particularly since the rebels had informed the Governor of their opposition to the Bill.

Soon after Central rule was imposed, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley wrote, ‘The Congress party in the State of Uttarakhand split after a section of the leadership alleged that they were dis-satisfied both with the Chief Minister and the central leadership of the Congress party. The split was on account of reasons internal to the Congress party. Nine Members of the Congress party in the Legislative Assembly decided to vote against the Appropriation Bill which provides for the budget of the State. On 18th March 2016, it appears that 35 Members voted against the Appropriation Bill and 32 in favour. These 35 Members comprised 27 from the BJP and 9 rebel Congressmen. There is documentary evidence both prior and subsequent to the Assembly Session to suggest that these 35 Members asked for a Division of Votes. The proceedings of the Assembly circulated in writing establishes the charge that a Division was asked for and yet it was claimed that the Appropriation Bill has been passed without a vote.’

Uttarakhand, where the Congress still held power despite the Modi wave of 2014 that saw BJP score big Lok Sabha gains in several Congress-ruled states such as Maharashtra and Haryana, was one of the older party’s few bright spots in an otherwise bleak scenario. Now the Uttarakhand crisis, coming on the heels of its Arunachal Pradesh debacle, has exposed the ineffectual decision-making of the party’s top leadership, whose writ over party members in these states is losing force. This is largely the result of its failure to properly back and empower a strong regional leadership with a well- defined hierarchy.

The weak Congress leadership at the Centre was unable to rein in the rebels within the Uttarakhand unit. The Gandhis’ backing of Vijay Bahuguna in 2012 had set the tone for Rawat’s undoing by its validation of a second power coterie in the state unit that was snapping at the Chief Minister’s heels. This was a group that was tracking Rawat’s misdeeds of governance and raising uncomfortable questions for him. There were indications ever since the BJP sweep of 2014, observers contend, that the party was headed for a split. With elections due in 2017, tensions within the state Congress had only been intensifying.

“The crisis in Uttarakhand cannot be laid at the BJP’s door. It is completely an inside job from within the Congress party,” says Jaitley.

For Congress rebels, it was the Gandhis’ lack of effective intervention that served as an opportunity to get back at Rawat. Since the party was no longer seen as a ‘meal ticket’ for power, they had little to lose in switching allegiance to the BJP, as nine did on 18 March, joining hands with the 27-member BJP in the state Assembly to approach the Governor and stake claim to forming an alternate government.

Says an analyst: “There is little logic in the contention, especially in view of the BJP’s imposition of President’s Rule, that the BJP egged on anti-Rawat Congressmen to bargain with it on the fishes and loaves of office. The BJP did not form a government in Dehradun. The Congress rebels are more likely to have viewed this as the best time to chart new roads, to garner political strength and support at this juncture, irrespective of the BJP.”

On its part, the BJP flatly rejects charges that it had anything to do with the goings- on in Uttarakhand. It was Rawat, say party members, who has been caught on a ‘sting’ video trying to woo the rebel legislators with carrots to ensure adequate numbers in a test of strength in the House. In this view, if the party had state leaders of stature—like the BJP has—this would not have come to pass.

If the Congress is worried about the stability of its regime in other small states, such as Himachal Pradesh and Manipur, it should be for the same reason. Since such states have smaller assemblies, the victory margins for those in power there are also slimmer, which makes them especially vulnerable to instability (note that the ‘aaya Ram gaya Ram’ syndrome had its origin in another small state, Haryana). Analysts observe that the era has long passed when the Congress could count on the popularity of its regional leaders. “A YS Rajasekhara Reddy could confidently call the shots in his homestate of Andhra Pradesh and hold his own against the party’s top leadership. There are virtually no regional leaders of that stature in the party now. Today, the Congress party has joined hands with the other opposition parties to quote the SR Bommai versus Union of India ruling of the SC which asserted that in the event of withdrawal of support to the ruling government by some legislators, the proper place under the Constitution for a test of strength was the floor of the Assembly. Yet, in the 80s, the Congress Government at the Centre forced the duly elected leader of Andhra Pradesh, NT Rama Rao, to parade a two-thirds majority in Delhi to prove his strength after unconstitutionally dismissing his government,” points out one. Times have changed so dramatically that the Congress has been reduced to being in a subordinate position to the Left parties in West Bengal against its own offshoot, the TMC of Mamata Banerjee, and hitching its bandwagon to the JD-U and RJD in Bihar and DMK in Tamil Nadu. In UP, the party has almost no presence. “These are signs of a central leadership that is bereft of political direction and suffers from a bankruptcy of ideas. The Congress, under its current leadership, is atrophying from within,” says the analyst.

Rahul Gandhi does not seem to have an answer to the party’s problems. In Bihar, for instance, he is understood to have opposed an alliance with Lalu Prasad although his party president and mother, Sonia Gandhi, was receptive to the idea. In the end, the Congress, with a near-nil presence in this state too, had little option but to go with the RJD and JD-U, which together won power with Congress as a junior ally. Likewise, the party has done a flip-flop in West Bengal. In November 2015, Rahul took to social media to air his view that the political ideology of the Left in the country was obsolete. Yet, the party is working with the CPM on a ‘tacit’ understanding for the state’s upcoming polls. In Assam, where the party is led by its geriatric stalwart Tarun Gogoi, the Congress has unofficially adopted JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar as its mascot. These contradictions have not gone down well with many Congress leaders.

In 2011, Uttar Pradesh’s then Chief Minister and BSP chief Mayawati had demanded, just months before the Assembly polls, that the state be divided further to form six more new states. As with the formation of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh in 2000, and, more recently, Telangana, an argument was made that smaller states would make better use of Central funds for the delivery of services to citizens, be administratively far less cumbersome, and ensure the development and effective governance of far-flung regions such as Bundelkhand.

Most campaigns for statehood, however, have been moored in sub-regional identity politics and actualised with strong political support. Quite apart from offering the trappings of chief ministerial, political and bureaucratic power to new players, new states are often also used to accommodate leaders of newly assertive groups in various institutional posts as heads. Arunachal and Uttarakhand have proved right Robert Dahl’s contention in his work, Size and Democracy that development, democracy and good governance are ‘size neutral’ and not a credible argument for the creation of smaller states. In India, systems of governance need to operate in harmony with the needs and aspirations of diverse peoples within a larger whole.

Size is not the issue. Leadership is.

CongresspoliticsSonia GandhiUttarakhandVijay Bahuguna