The fight for federalism in the electoral arena

On Thursday, at a public meeting in Tamil Nadu's hill town of Gudalur, on the 22nd day of his Bharat Jodo Yatra, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi accused the Narendra Modi government of using governors to "topple" opposition-ruled states. He said the Centre had no right to hold back states' share of the GST.

"The Centre and states should be partners," Gandhi said. Earlier this year, he and the PM had a heated debate in the Lok Sabha on the ambit of Indian federalism.

Several opposition parties complain of the "misuse" of central probe agencies against them.

Of late, state governments ruled by non-BJP parties have had frequent run-ins with their respective governors. In Kerala, Governor Arif Mohammad Khan is using the Thiruvananthapuram Raj Bhavan to launch attacks on the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left Democratic Front government. In neighbouring Tamil Nadu, in April, Governor R N Ravi stalled assent to the DMK government's NEET Exemption Bill, with CM M K Stalin and his ministers boycotting the Raj Bhavan's 'At Home' reception in response.

Further up the east coast, in Bengal, CM Mamata Banerjee heaved a sigh of relief when Jagdeep Dhankhar left the Raj Bhavan to move to 6 Maulana Azad Road in Lutyens' Delhi, the residence of the country's Vice President. In Punjab, Governor Banwarilal Purohit said no to the Aam Aadmi Party government's recommendation for a special assembly session. "How can the governor refuse a session called by the cabinet? Then democracy is over," tweeted AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal. Relations between Telangana governor Tamilisai Soundararajan and the K Chandrashekar Rao-led state government hit another low earlier this month.

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At an event to mark the beginning of her fourth year as Telangana governor, Soundararajan accused Rao’s government of discriminating against her and mistreating her because she is a woman.

The situation worsened when Soundararajan started holding ‘praja darbars’ at Raj Bhavan to listen to people’s grievances and forward these to the government. Rao’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi said she is acting at the behest of the BJP, which is aiming to come to power in the next year’s Assembly polls.

Over a decade ago, at the BJP’s Lucknow national executive in June 2011, Narendra Modi moved a resolution headlined, ‘UPA: A grave threat to our federalism’. He accused the Congress-led government of misusing central investigative agencies, using governors as its political agents and arrogating states’ legislative powers. Modi’s critique of the UPA government — he called it the Delhi Sultanate — was convincing since he was, at the time, a two-term chief minister of Gujarat. Even otherwise, the BJP, since its founding in 1980, had stood for robust federalism.

In the context of worsening Centre-state relations, the BJP’s 2014 Lok Sabha poll manifesto makes for a refreshing read. It promised to look at Centre-state relations from the prism of “Team India”, which would not only be “limited to the PM-led team sitting in Delhi”, but also include “chief ministers as equal partners”. The manifesto committed to “ensure fiscal autonomy of states” and revive “moribund forums” like the Inter-State Council.

In June, Tamil Nadu CM M K Stalin, in a letter to the PM, flagged the lack of Inter-State Council meetings —the last was in July 2016. He said the council’s mandate, proposed by the Sarkaria Commission in 1988 and constituted in 1990, is to meet three times a year.

‘Reluctant’ federalism

The Congress' record in nurturing Centre-state relations was abysmal during the Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi years — flagrant misuse of Article 356 of the Constitution to dismiss opposition-ruled state governments was its hallmark. But as Hyderabad University professor K K Kailash has written, “Traditionally, the BJP has been a votary of a strong Centre and like the Congress, a reluctant federalist.”

But political commentator Radhika Ramaseshan says Modi’s transition, possibly because of his chief ministerial stint, from Gandhinagar to Raisina Hill, has been incremental in the context of Centre-state relations. His government was receptive to the states’ concerns in the first term. The Fourteenth Finance Commission increased the states’ share from the divisible pool from 32 per cent to 42 per cent, the largest increase ever in vertical tax devolution.

Arun Jaitley’s role in bringing all states on board with GST had seemed like a high point in India’s federalism. Other political compulsions compelled such an approach as the BJP’s numbers in the Rajya Sabha were low, and the support of regional parties was needed to pass crucial bills. To put it in context, the BJP’s tally in the Rajya Sabha was 45 (of 245) in 2015 to Congress’ 69. In 2019, the BJP was at 83 and Congress, 46. Currently, the BJP has 93 MPs to Congress’ 31.

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After 2019, Raj Bhavans have, as the opposition alleges, become headquarters for the BJP’s several versions of ‘operational lotus’ — some successful and some not so — imposing President’s rule as legislative minorities are sought to be converted into majorities.

Within a couple of months of the BJP’s Lok Sabha win in 2019, Karnataka’s Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) government collapsed. Similar fates met the Kamal Nath-led Congress government in Bhopal a year later and the Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra in mid-2022. Currently, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-Congress coalition government is on tenterhooks.

Crumbling Centre-state relations have had another fallout — the use and abuse of administrative machinery. The turf war between Maharashtra and Bihar after the suicide of Hindi film actor Sushant Singh Rajput, and the Punjab Police versus Delhi Police fracas over the arrest of BJP’s Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, over a tweet against Kejriwal, are examples.

The opposition

Some CMs have proposed a conclave of non-BJP chief ministers to improve Centre-state relations. This echoes the March 1983 meeting where Karnataka CM Ramakrishna Hegde had called on his southern counterparts to discuss issues of federalism. The circumstances were somewhat similar. With a brute majority at the Centre, Congress was misusing Article 356.

Subsequently, in May 1983, N T Rama Rao, the Andhra Pradesh CM and Telugu Desam Party chief, hosted 24 opposition leaders to stitch an alliance against the Congress. The Vijayawada Conclave was the first time 14 ideologically disparate non-Congress political parties, including communist parties and the BJP, got together in one place and issued a joint statement.

As then, so now, the fight for a more robust federal structure has to be fought in the electoral arena. The events of 1983 formed the bedrock of the eventual rise of regional parties in national politics, culminating in the National Front and United Front governments, breaking Congress monopoly on the levers of power.

Could it be that a similar process is underway as the BJP rule has increased the centralisation of decision-making?