GAME OF FOULS

In Kerala, the brawl between the governor and the ruling LDF shows no signs of abating 

- NIRMAL JOVIAL

IN MARCH 1957, around five months after Kerala was born, the results of the state’s first assembly polls were declared. The Communist Party of India bagged 60 seats—17 more than rival Congress, but four short of majority. Staking a claim to form government, the CPI roped in five independents and elected E.M.S. Namboodiripad as its legislative party leader.

Governor Burgula Ramakrishna Rao, however, turned a blind eye and began meeting the independents one by one. All of them pledged support for the CPI, forcing Rao to finally invite the party to form government. He struck back two years later, though. He wrote to the president that the constitutional machinery in the state had broken down under CPI rule. The letter would lead to the fall of the government.

There have since been a number of instances of the governor and the ruling party in Kerala locking horns. But never has it been as aggressive and ugly as the ongoing fight between Governor Arif Mohammad Khan and the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front government.

Disputes between the two sides had been simmering for a while. They reached a flashpoint in early August, when the government tried to bring a law curtailing the governor’s statutory powers as chancellor of state universities. Khan refused to give his assent, and accused the government of trying to regularise illegal appointments in universities.

A Supreme Court verdict on October 21 armed the governor further. It quashed the appointment of Rajashree M.S. as vice chancellor of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technological University in Thiruvananthapuram.