New Delhi, Feb. 6: The Congress is in a dilemma over the appointment of governors after the Supreme Court’s damning observations in the Bihar Assembly dissolution judgment.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi have come under fire for inducting a former governor, Sushil Kumar Shinde, in the cabinet days after the court said Raj Bhavans should be kept out of politics.

The court quoted excerpts from the Sarkaria Commission report stressing that the incumbent should be a “detached figure and not too intimately connected with the local politics of the state and should be a person who has not taken too great a part in politics generally and particularly in the recent past”.

In the verdict that rapped Buta Singh for recommending dissolution, the court said: “It is seen that one day a person is in active politics in as much as he holds the office of the chief minister or minister or a party post and almost on the following day, or, in any case, soon thereafter, the same person is appointed as the governor in another state with hardly any cooling period.”

The observation applies to the last word to Shinde. He had hoped to return as Maharashtra chief minister after the Congress-NCP alliance was re-elected in 2004, but lost out to Vilasrao Deshmukh. As consolation, Shinde was made governor of Andhra Pradesh and is said to have been promised a place in the Manmohan Singh cabinet later.

Political observers were shocked by the “alacrity and cynicism” with which the governor was brought in as minister while the Centre was still smarting under the court’s verdict on Buta.

Now there is a rethink in the Congress on whether it should “risk” making more leaders governors. There are two vacancies in Bihar and Andhra and four more in the pipeline in Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Tamil Nadu and the Union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Sources said party general secretary Margaret Alva has made it known she would like to be made governor.

The other politician being considered was Uttaranchal chief minister N.D. Tiwari because the Congress wanted to bring a “younger” face in his place before the 2007 Assembly elections.

But following the court rap, a search is on for former bureaucrats, academics and army generals “sympathetic” to the Congress to fill the posts.