#dnaEdit: Right at last

Delhi’s Lt Governor Najeeb Jung had at last done the right thing — recommend the dissolution of the Delhi assembly and pave the way for fresh elections. But he marred the image of the Lt Governor and of himself by going through the mock process of consultations with the major parties to explore the possibility of forming a government when there was no possibility of doing so. He opened himself to the suspicion that he was trying to facilitate the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was the single largest party, to form the government. He was not strictly playing by the rule-book. The BJP seemed to have realised that it could not muster the numbers despite its not-so-subtle manoeuvres to tap into some of the disenchanted members from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The AAP raised the alarm by revealing what it claimed to be a sting about the BJP’s attempt to get the AAP MLAs. The BJP which had initially stuck to the position that it would not form the government because it did not have the required numbers should have stuck to its position. It did not and its change in position did no credit to the party.   

There was no doubt that the elected MLAs belonging to all the parties did not want to fight another election soon after a hard-won victory in December last year. The leaders of the party could not ignore the sentiment. The honourable thing was for the Lt Governor to ask the BJP, as the single largest party, to form the government, the way it did in Maharashtra last week. The BJP dithered though the reasons for doing so can only be guessed at.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) did the right thing in agreeing to form the government to end the impasse. There was no doubt that the party resigned on a flimsy pretext because it was clear that a minority government could not have implemented its agenda, and what it had to do was to keep an elected government going. But then parties have the right to do what they believe in. After AAP Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal stepped down, the Lt Governor should have called for elections and they could have been held along with the Lok Sabha elections.

There are also the constitutional and political dimensions to the issue, which recur time and again. What is the meaning of a hung verdict? The answer is that people did not trust any of the parties sufficiently and that obliges them to work together whatever their pathological aversions for each other. Is it constitutionally tenable to form a minority government? Yes. Minority governments are constitutional. And the party with the largest number of seats short of a majority will have to run the government in cooperation with the other parties. That indeed is the mandate. It does not imply that the single largest party should do whatever it can to turn its minority status into that of a majority. It also means that no  party in power in this situation can impose its agenda. And in this kind of a situation, the governor or Lt Governor should never ask the party to prove its majority. It is an open and cynical invitation to horse-trading. There is a need to accept the constitutional morality involved in a hung verdict. A hung verdict indeed hurts the egos of the political parties and leaders, but they should learn to accept the people’s lack of trust in them.