Is Madhya Pradesh heading for President's rule?

Madhya Pradesh appears to be heading towards President’s Rule unless the Supreme Court intervenes to diffuse the constitutional crisis emanating from direct confrontation between Governor Lalji Tandon and Assembly Speaker NP Prajapati over holding floor test on the fate of beleaguered Kamal Nath government.

The crisis deepened on Monday as the speaker defied the governor’s directive for the floor test and instead adjourned the house till March 26, citing threat to MLAs from coronavirus pandemics.

Soon after the house adjournment which was preceded by barely a minute long Governor’s address and advice to the state government to adhere to the constitutional values, the BJP moved the Supreme Court. The court admitted its petition for hearing Tuesday. The same date has been fixed by the governor for floor test in his rather stern letter, his second in 24 hours, to the chief minister.

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The letter followed BJP MLAs’ meeting with the governor at the Raj Bhavan where former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan showed him a list of 106 party lawmakers. The governor assured the MLAs that their rights would not be transgressed and now it was his responsibility to save democracy in the state.

However, Chief Minister Kamal Nath appears inclined to defy the governor’s directive for floor test once again, on the grounds that the decision to adjourn the house was Speaker’s and he cannot interfere in it.

Congress MLAs met at the chief minister’s residence before and after attending the Assembly, and discussed strategies to anyhow retrieve the government from existential troubles bedevilling it since March 9 when Jyotiraditya Scindia’s supporter 19 MLAs went incommunicado.

They were later traced to a Bengaluru resort. Three more MLAs joined them later and all sent their resignations to the speaker from their hideout through a former minister in the Shivraj Singh government.

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On March 8 they shifted to another hotel in Bengaluru where they underwent a test for coronavirus and procured fitness certificates ahead of their planned return to Bhopal.

The deepening political crisis in the government is primarily due to the rebel MLAs’ continued stay in Bengaluru.

The chief minister has put as pre-condition return of the rebel MLAs for agreeing to the floor test.

The speaker had summoned them twice but they have stayed put in Bengaluru, sending, instead, recorded videos of their pledged support to Scindia.

The rebels’ defiance upset calculation of the Congress which flew its flock of 92 MLAs to Jaipur.

They are back in Bhopal but still staying together in a local five-star hotel. BJP too followed the resort politics by flying its MLAs to a Manesar resort in Haryana from where they returned on Sunday and flew back on Monday night.