NEW DELHI: Former Union law minister H R Bharadwaj on Thursday revealed that he was under tremendous pressure from the Manmohan Singh government to get a favourable order from the Supreme Court , which was examining the UPA government ’s decision to impose President’s rule in Bihar in 2005 to prevent the JD(U)-BJP combine from coming to power.Bharadwaj said he had even met then Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal, who headed the constitution bench which dealt with the case, to get a favourable judgment but could not summon the nerves to broach the topic. The five-judge bench, by a 3-2 majority, had held that imposition of President’s rule was a misuse of Article 356 and was clearly politically motivated based on a skewed report by then governor Buta Singh.The former law minister said Justice Sabharwal was a family friend but was a very tough judge. “I could not muster the courage to ask for any favour on the issue from Sabharwal when we met over a cup of coffee,” he said at a function to inaugurate the Moot Court Hall of National Law University, Delhi, named after late Justice Sabharwal.Finance minister Arun Jaitley, who had attacked the UPA for imposing President’s rule to thwart a Nitish Kumar-led JD(U)-BJP coalition from forming the government, was also present at the function.Elaborating on his predicament when President’s rule was challenged in the SC, Bharadwaj said, “I was in deep trouble at that time. So many horses from different breeds were part of the Union Cabinet and I was told that I would lose my job (if the SC struck down President’s rule).”The remarks were immediately read as a reference to pressure that Lalu Prasad, whose RJD was an influential component of the UPA, was said to have brought to bear upon Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for dissolution of the assembly after JD(U) and BJP had mustered necessary numbers to form the government.On January 24, 2006, the SC minced no words in declaring dissolution of Bihar’s newly-elected assembly as unlawful. It said the council of ministers should have verified the facts stated in the governor’s report before hurriedly accepting it as gospel truth.The scathing indictment led the then President A P J Abdul Kalam to consider quitting. Kalam had ratified the dissolution at the instance of the Union Cabinet which, in order to secure instant dissolution of the assembly, secured his approval through fax when he was in Russia.Interestingly, Justice Sabharwal pronounced the majority decision without specifying what the division among the five-judge bench was. But Bharadwaj appeared to have inner knowledge about the working of the constitution bench and told the media that it was a 3-2 verdict, which turned out to be true later.