Jois, Singh

New Delhi, Nov. 11: Gopalkrishna Gandhi is not the first governor to have breached the unwritten expectation that Raj Bhavan occupants should avoid speaking out on matters of politics or governance.

In January 2004, the Bihar governor of the day, Rama Jois, had publicly criticised the state government at the official Republic Day function in Patna over the law-and-order situation. He had said that fear and terror ruled uppermost in the minds of people.

This prompted an annoyed Lalu Prasad, chief of the ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal, to demand his removal.

The Assam governor, Lieutenant General (retd) Ajai Singh, had in October this year released a media statement saying all development programmes in the North Cachar Hills were on hold because the state had not released funds.

Tarun Gogoi’s government hit back through another media release, saying the hills’ autonomous council had not accounted for previous funds.

Jurist and academic Rajeev Dhavan today defended the propriety of Gandhi’s decision to speak out on Nandigram, describing it as an act of “statesmanship”.

The Bengal governor had on Friday issued a statement deploring the “recapture” of Nandigram villages by the CPM’s private army as “unlawful and unacceptable”.

“(A governor) is not a political voice of a political party. The governor is a constitutional authority, not a spokesman for the party in power. When such things occur, sometimes it is the duty of the governor to state his mind. He has not indulged in party politics… it is not a provocation,” Dhavan said.

“The governor can always advise his cabinet off the record. But the governor was speaking out at a time of public distrust… expressing his concern over law and order and urging all sides to resolve it quickly.”

In 2001, however, the Assam governor, Lieutenant General (retd) S.K. Sinha, was widely criticised when he said the United Liberation Front of Asom was trying to change the state’s demography by selectively targeting Hindi-speaking labourers. Sinha had suggested the Ulfa wanted to replace the Biharis with Bangladeshi Muslims.

Although the statement was not an attack on the Gogoi government, it was seen as indirect criticism of its failure — as is the wont when governors break their silence.

Suraj Bhan, a governor with BJP roots and appointed by a BJP-led Centre, was accused of interfering in the functioning of a BJP state government.

When Kalyan Singh was Uttar Pradesh chief minister in the late 1990s, Bhan, the incumbent at the Lucknow Raj Bhavan, held meetings with state divisional commissioners and attended Dalit conventions, drawing widespread criticism.

The Congress yesterday distanced itself from Gandhi’s statement, but party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi pleaded that Nandigram was “first and foremost a human problem” and should be seen as one.