Watch Nidhi Razdan: The struggle to redefine governorship in India

Gulf News

An unprecedented and important battle is raging in India’s Supreme Court — between elected state governments and their Governors who are appointed by the federal government. At the heart of this clash is a fight for upholding the constitutional principles of a federal democracy.  Read the full story here: https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/rethinking-the-relevance-of-governors-in-india-1.99564805  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  #UAEnews #India #politics

Transcript

00:00There is a huge tussle going on at the moment between India's opposition-ruled states

00:09and governors who are appointed by the central government. Four opposition-ruled states – Tamil

00:14Nadu, Punjab, Kerala and Telangana – have gone to India's Supreme Court, essentially saying that

00:20governors in their states have been sitting on a number of bills that the state assemblies have

00:24passed, which means that they cannot become law, and that means that governance has been affected.

00:30Now, the Supreme Court has made some pretty strong observations while hearing this matter,

00:34coming down hard on governors for being partisan. So much so, that literally within a day or so of

00:40their last hearing, the Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi, who's been at loggerheads with the DMK

00:45government there, suddenly returned a number of bills, ten of them, that had been sitting with

00:50him for nearly three years now. In fact, the court made note of that and asked what he had

00:55been doing for three years and questioned whether he did it because of what the Supreme Court said

01:00and how it intervened. But it all really boils down to the office of the governor. Do we still

01:06need this colonial era post in today's 21st century democratic India? What is the purpose

01:12that governors are actually serving? It was meant to be a non-partisan constitutional position,

01:18but ever since the post was created for decades now, it has been misused by the central government

01:24to basically act against opposing governments at the state level. So whether it was under the

01:29Congress rule and now under the BJP rule, governors have by and large been partisan and they've been

01:35agents of the centre. They've not only sat on bills, but have often through their actions

01:40helped in the downfall of governments. So why do we need them? Who's going to miss them if they go?

01:46It's a longstanding debate in India, but one that needs to be revisited and

01:50seriously discussed. Is it time to do away with this post?

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Transcript

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