No governing principle

Making a former CBI director a governor is inept signalling,both for Congress and the agency

Making a former CBI director a governor is inept signalling,both for Congress and the agency

In a first,former CBI director Ashwani Kumar has been appointed governor of Nagaland. While this may be a perfectly upstanding appointment at the individual level,it focuses attention on the way appointments to crucial constitutional posts are handled. As the countrys premier investigative agency,the CBI is often accused of helping the government bury its inconvenient truths,pursue its adversaries,pick and drop cases,depending on the way the political wind is blowing. The oppositions insistence that the agency is used to settle political scores,and the clamour to bring it under the Lokpal scrutiny,all stem from this,often deserved,mistrust of the agency. The CBI has,indeed,appeared to oblige both the Congress and the BJP governments at different points. Given that context,it is particularly inept signalling to choose a governor associated with the agency. It not only bolsters the sense that the Congress operates through old-style patronage,it also clouds the CBIs reputation if its directors operate with the possibility of high office in future.

Governors,equipped with formal and discretionary powers,are appointed by the president,with the result that they owe their job to the political dispensation at the Centre. In a growing number of situations where there is friction between the ruling coalition at the Centre and the states ruling party,the governors impartiality and adherence to constitutional propriety is of utmost importance. The appointment of governors,though,continues to be mired in partisanship and favour-mongering. They are usually battle-weary politicians,favoured civil servant retirees or officers from the security and intelligence services. In this context,the number of former intelligence officers who have been ensconced in various Raj Bhavans in the UPAs tenure is striking from M.K. Narayanan in West Bengal to B.V. Wanchoo in Goa,B.L. Joshi in Uttar Pradesh to E.S.L. Narasimhan in Andhra Pradesh. It is not clear what makes this particular background particularly suited to holding up the constitutional duties required of a governor. While all governments have used these appointments in an instrumental way,the Congress is particularly to blame for its blatant use of the office,sometimes as reward for services rendered,sometimes to give its own leaders an honourable exit from the political fray.

Despite the long-ago Sarkaria Commissions recommendations on keeping the governors post scrupulously neutral,which included finding persons of clear eminence,ideally only minimally involved with politics and not invested in the matters of the state he or she is to govern,these principles have rarely entered the calculus while choosing a governor. Even by those low standards,however,appointing a CBI director as a governor is a particularly tone-deaf decision.