Sitaram Yechury
New Delhi: The CPI-M on Thursday accused the central government of "misusing" governors' posts by choosing to fill them with people from a "pool" of loyal party functionaries, RSS swayamsewaks, and pliable retired bureaucrats and generals.
The latest editorial of the CPI-Marxist mouthpiece, People's Daily, has said that the appointment of Justice S Abdul Nazeer, who had retired from the Supreme Court just two months ago, as the governor of Andhra Pradesh is an "egregious example" of how the Modi government distributes these posts.
"The recent appointment of six new governors by the president of India has revealed a lot about how the post of governor is viewed and cynically misused by the Modi government.
"It may be recalled that Justice Nazeer was part of the five-member bench which gave a unanimous verdict in the Ayodhya dispute case in 2019. As such, this appointment is being widely seen as a quid pro quo," the editorial stated.
It further said that the BJP-led central government has a "dubious record" of appointing Justice P Sathasivam as governor of Kerala in 2014 – the first instance of a retired chief justice of India becoming a governor.
"This step had drawn widespread criticism from retired judges and jurists who saw in this move a threat to judicial independence. Four of the other appointees belong to the RSS-BJP pedigree. They are mostly second-rank leaders of the BJP, whose only qualification presumably is their loyalty to the ruling party and the RSS," it said.
The party said that how these governors perform their duties is determined by their loyalty to the ruling party.
"This is evident in how one of the appointees has expressed slavish gratitude to the ruling party leaders.
"For Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, the choice of governors is from a pool of loyal party functionaries, RSS swayamsewaks and pliable retired bureaucrats and generals. The governors appointed to the non-BJP ruled states in the past few years have shown them to be agents of the ruling party, or, worse political henchmen," it said.
The editorial alleged that these governors have "trampled" upon constitutional norms and arrogated to themselves the task of supervising and interfering in matters which concern the elected state governments.
"All the non-BJP-run state governments must come together to demand an end to the unconstitutional acts of the governors which are encouraged and abetted by the central government.
"Public campaigns should be launched in these states to mobilise the people to defend the federal principle and to check the arbitrary actions of governors," it said.
PTI
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