G S Vasu By

In less than two weeks of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao mooting the idea of an anti-Congress and anti-BJP Federal Front, it has now gone beyond politics though the context could still be the upcoming national election in 2019. Whether such a front will indeed take shape and if so what kind of impact it will have on the electoral outcome is still a matter of conjecture but it has surely opened up a bigger debate on the federal structure of the Indian Constitution.

If West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was always in the forefront of taking on the Centre on various issues, her Karnataka counterpart Siddaramaiah went a step further bringing up the North-South equation into public debate, accusing Delhi of denying southern states their rightful share just because they are performing well on various indices. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan joined the issue questioning the logic in having 2011 census data as the basis (instead of 1971) for devolution of net proceeds of Union taxes and duties. States that made significant progress between 1971 and 2011 stand to lose enormously, he said, describing it as a gross injustice. According to him, Kerala receives a paltry 25 paisa for every rupee it contributes to the Union kitty, TN gets 40 paisa, Karnataka 47 paisa while Uttar Pradesh takes `1.79 for 1 rupee it contributes. Andhra Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, the estranged ally of the BJP, supported the argument while KCR cautioned the Centre of this growing feeling among Southern states that they are made to lose out.

On the face of it, there appears to be merit in their argument but the substantive question is whether there is anything “federal” about the federal structure of our Constitution or is it just a sham? No Constitution is written in stone and ours is surely not given the number of amendments that were brought about since the time it came into being. And, democracy is not about just having an election once in five years and electing a party of people’s choice. It is about empowerment of people in the real sense and if states indeed do not enjoy territorial integrity or powers that should be vested in them in the normal course, isn’t it time we revisit the issue?

Take, for example, the power vested in the Union to impose President’s Rule in states, which collapses both federalism and electoral democracy at one stroke. While invoking it if “there is a grave menace to the peace and tranquility in a state” can be understood, how the provision has been used, rather misused, is too well known. Post 1967 elections, which were not in favour of the Congress, Indira Gandhi brought down governments in many states, including Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal and Odisha. The misuse continued thereafter despite multiple judgments by the highest court, the latest being the dismissal of governments by the BJP-led Centre to break the Congress rule in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. We now get to hear that one of the primary reasons why the Central government is not willing to elevate a Uttarakhand judge to the Supreme Court is because he overturned President’s Rule in that state.

As well-known lawyer Rajeev Dhavan points out in his latest book The Constitution of India: Miracle, Surrender, Hope, imposition of President’s Rule was a British practice meant to destroy provincial governments. “The malady of defections exists in both the Union and the States. If answers can be found for the Union without such an Emergency rule, those answers apply equally for the States,” he argues.

There are other spheres, too, where the nature of our federal polity comes into question. With as many as 100 items figuring in the Union List and the Concurrent List slowly getting expanded (now more than 50) and considering that states have no legal rights against the overriding powers of the Union, we are bound to be confronted with this argument that we just have a pragmatic federalism overlaid by strong unitary features and, therefore, cannot be called federal in its truest sense.

The nationwide uproar over the conduct of a common entrance test for admission to medical colleges (NEET) is another case in point. Education, for many years, was a state subject as entry 11 in the second list. By way of the 42nd amendment, it was made entry 25 in the third list (concurrent). Unless the Centre too intends to have “power” over granting permissions/affiliations and so on for educational institutions, there is no other merit in having education in the concurrent list. Just as the leak of a question paper can happen even if it is a centrally administered test as it could at the state level! And, in a country as diverse as ours how does one expect a student from a small town to compete with an urban-bred one from a well-to-do family and in a position to afford the best possible education?

Law and order is a state subject but the Centre has armed itself with enough provisions/agencies to arm twist governments/leaders in states in case it chooses to. One can understand a central agency like the CBI investigating cases that have federal implications and beyond. However, we all know too well as to what for the CBI is used by whichever party is in power at the Centre. Does it really mean, as some argue, that all such provisions are part of an attempt to create a monolithic, unitary state?

One way of responding to issues raised by the chief ministers is to dismiss them as being “politically motivated” and being raked up now with an eye on the elections, the immediate one in Karnataka or the bigger battle in 2019. The broader way of looking at it is to seriously examine if there are aspects that are undermining the avowed federal structure that the world’s largest democracy boasts itself of.

G S Vasu

Editor, The New Indian Express

Email: vasu@newindianexpress.com