The role of the speaker of the Jharkhand assembly extends far beyond serving or sitting over notices to the legislators. The recent controversy is a case study of how the speaker’s office can emerge as a parallel centre of power in smaller states.

Soon after it became public knowledge last week that four Jharkhand ministers had gone ‘underground’ in New Delhi, the speaker, Inder Singh Namdhari, then in London, received an SOS from the chief minister, Arjun Munda. Namdhari was on his way to Nigeria to attend a Commonwealth speakers’ conference. But he rushed back to Ranchi instead, ostensibly because he was ‘indisposed’. It was no coincidence that within minutes after he arrived home from the airport, the chief minister turned up to enquire about his well-being. The ‘courtesy call’ lasted four hours, according to media reports, and when they emerged with broad grins creasing their faces, there was little sign of either illness, jet-lag or fatigue. The speaker did not flinch from answering questions on the political crisis in the state and volunteered that the ‘communication gap’ with the disgruntled ministers would be bridged soon.

It might have appeared unusual to observers outside the state to find the speaker of a legislative body delivering statements he had no business to make. But it evoked no surprise within the state. Namdhari, evidently in love with his own voice, has never provided any proof that he knows of the adage, “the speaker does not speak”. Indeed it is difficult to stop him from speaking on any subject, specially if it is a political matter involving him. Arguably the most ‘powerful’ speaker in the country, Namdhari has been cavalier in his approach and free with his opinion. Asked to justify the timing of the notices served on three of the rebels last week, he did not blink before stating, “you have to strike the iron when it is hot.” He has been a part of the National Democratic Alliance government, emerged as a power-centre and is clearly loath to even consider giving up the privileges.

Eager to share the spoils of power, the Bharatiya Janata Party allowed the speaker to emerge as a parallel power-centre. A former BJP leader, Namdhari, who is an engineer-turned-businessman from Palamau and quotes from scriptures on every occasion, has been with the Janata Dal (United) for some time. The suave, articulate and educated Namdhari was described as a ‘natural’ choice for the speaker’s post. And it turns out that one of the first things he did was to discard the well-established Rules of Business of the Bihar assembly and foist his own rulebook on the new legislature. He packed the legislature with his own people as employees, broke all convention by placing his own photograph on the rulebook and, finally, mocked at constitutional propriety by nominating a ‘secretary’ who is not even a graduate.

The office of the secretary to the assembly secretariat is generally filled by an officer from the judicial service not below the rank of a district judge. Many of the secretaries of the Bihar assembly have been elevated in the past to the post of high court judges. But it suited Namdhari to choose a man who has had no experience of dealing with the law. Why he did that is anybody’s guess but both the NDA and the opposition are guilty of ignoring the brazen act.

The speaker also went about keeping legislators in good humour. While undivided Bihar, with 325 members, had fewer than 20 permanent committees, in the much smaller Jharkhand assembly, with just 82 members, as many as 34 permanent committees were formed to accommodate everyone. All the committees were allowed to travel extensively on ‘study tours’ and submit perfunctory reports. Many committees apparently did not bother to complete even this formality. The speaker also went a step further and allowed special assembly committees to interfere with the administration. While most special assembly committees are constituted to look at specific issues or problems and report back to the house with its recommendations, Jharkhand’s special assembly committees went about conducting ‘surprise inspections’, intimidating officials, issuing orders — and all this in the glare of television cameras, summoned by them to record their triumphant activism.

Namdhari also interfered with the administration directly. Secretaries to government departments began sending transfer lists of engineers, block development officers and suchlike to the speaker for vetting . While the Constitution is clear on separation of powers between the legislature, executive and the judiciary, the Jharkhand speaker can be credited with the dubious attempt to blur the lines. Indeed, one of the secretaries to a government department, an IAS officer, recalled receiving a telephone call from him. The officer had been transferred to a new department and was ignorant of the new practice. He had failed to send the transfer list to the speaker and was admonished for having interfered with a ‘healthy tradition’. Departmental secretaries were kept on tenterhooks by the assembly, which would forward eighty or more questions before every assembly session. But the secretariat would finally approve only five of them to be raised in the assembly, but without any further reference to the departments. It resulted sometimes in inadequate or incomplete replies by the government and allowed the speaker to admonish officers in the house. Indeed, before every session of the assembly, the speaker took to holding a meeting with senior civil and police officials in the state. With the chief secretary and director-general of police in attendance, among others, Namdhari would solicit information, give his own opinion and even ‘directions’, complain officials.

Namdhari has also displayed an uncanny ability to cope with controversy. Virtually ninety per cent of all new appointments made by the assembly are said to be from the speaker’s own constituency. But even when the scandal broke, he remained completely unfazed. He could do nothing, he declared brazenly, if people from his constituency happened to be more alert and displayed a greater desire to serve in the assembly. Similarly, most of the petitions, and they are said to run into several hundreds, forwarded by the speaker to the petitions committee of the house, are from his own constituency, claimed harassed bureaucrats who have found themselves at the receiving end of a malevolent speaker’s actions. Curiously again, reports of the committee have never been laid before the house.

It was not written on the wall. But if Jharkhand appears to be scripting a sorry tale, a combination of amoral politics and sordid governance can be blamed. And if there is one major contributing factor to be identified, it has to be the betrayal by the NDA, specially the BJP, which created the state and ruled over it for six, virtually uninterrupted, years. It had the hindsight of knowing how systems were subverted in Bihar, but still appeared happy to subvert the system in Jharkhand, with disastrous results. The Jharkhand speaker’s case could easily serve to illustrate how the legislature can be used to subvert the established system.