Indira Gandhi was in the dock, and unruly members of the Youth Congress were giving vent to their anger by disrupting proceedings at inquiry commissions set up by the Janata Party government in 1977 to investigate the alleged excesses of the Emergency years. In the midst of it all, there was one man who seemed to enjoy the tamasha. He was a young lawyer then — and is today the governor of Karnataka, Hans Raj Bhardwaj.

“Almost every one of us felt that the Youth Congress should be reined in, but Bhardwaj opposed us and said that intimidation was a good pressure tactic. He always had an eye for the bizarre and liked to set a cat among the pigeons,” says a member of the legal team that defended Gandhi and her son Sanjay before the commissions.

Bhardwaj, 74, clearly still likes to do so. When the former Union law minister was appointed the governor of Karnataka almost two years ago, it was thought that the sprawling Raj Bhavan in Bangalore would be a quiet getaway for him before his retirement from public life. But he has been anything but quiet — publicly criticising state government functionaries or recommending, as he did recently, that President’s rule be imposed in the state. With the Union home ministry refusing to act on his report, Bhardwaj declared earlier this week that the Raj Bhavan was like a prison, and he, a “jail bird”.

While some feel that his days as a governor may be numbered, others who know him are not surprised by his actions. “Did anyone expect anything different from him when he was appointed? At least I didn’t,” says Ved Prakash Marwah, a former governor and police officer who worked closely with Bhardwaj on several cases in Delhi when the latter was a state prosecutor. “He does things in his own way and has the knack of being in the news,” adds Marwah.

Karnataka governor Hans Raj Bhardwaj

Bhardwaj, indeed, has often been in the news. He was the defence lawyer for Dhirendra Brahmachari, a yoga expert and Indira Gandhi associate, when Brahmachari was charged with importing an aircraft from the US during the Emergency without paying custom duties. “He was a good criminal lawyer, knowledgeable and forceful. One always expected something new in his arguments and prosecutors found him difficult,” says criminal lawyer Ramesh Gupta, senior advocate, Delhi High Court.

His unconventional approach impressed Sanjay Gandhi and rewards followed after the Congress was voted back to power in 1980. Loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family was always a priority for Bhardwaj, whose father, a Delhi Police inspector, was one of Jawaharlal Nehru’s security men. In fact, Bhardwaj spent his formative years in the staff quarters of Teen Murti Bhavan, the official residence of the Prime Minister till Nehru’s death.

Today, the governor finds himself in the eye of an ugly storm, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Karnataka demanding that he be recalled. “When he was appointed the governor, he declared himself to be a Congressman first. Ever since he has been a busybody and has effectively taken the role of the Opposition leader,” says BJP state committee president K.S. Eshwarappa.

According to the Constitution, a governor is the constitutional and executive head of the government in a state, playing a role similar to that of the President at the Centre. “A governor should be well aware of the politics of the state, but he should never participate in it. That’s what the Constitution mandates,” says Bhishma Narain Singh, former governor of Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

But irrespective of what the Constitution says, governors have often been political.

According to Singh, the role of governors underwent a change after 1967, when parties opposing the Congress started forming governments in states. “The state governments started alleging that governors were becoming agents of the Centre. Sometimes the conduct of the governors was not above board,” says Singh.

Constitutional expert Subhash C. Kashyap adds that a governor is definitely the “agent” of the Union but “should never be the agent of the central government”.

But many governors over the years have been accused of acting on behalf of the party ruling the Centre — from Ram Lal, Governor of Andhra Pradesh in 1984, who dismissed N.T. Rama Rao’s government despite the latter enjoying a overwhelming majority, to P. Venkatasubbaiah, Governor of Karnataka who did not allow S.R. Bommai’s Janata Dal government to prove its majority in the Assembly, and Bhanu Pratap Singh, Governor of Goa, who dismissed chief minister Wilfred D’Souza.

“There is no problem with the office of the governor, but the kind of people appointed leaves a lot to be desired,” says Kashyap. According to him, almost all the parties in power at the Centre have failed to follow the unwritten convention of appointing apolitical governors.

In the 2006 Rameshwar Prasad vs Union of India case, the Supreme Court examined the role of governors and also referred to the 1988 Report of the Sarkaria Commission on Centre-State Relations in which the Commission maintained that the prestige of the governor’s office could be maintained by “picking the right person” for the post. The Commission had recommended that an eminent person from outside the state with no role in local politics be appointed governor.

But political affiliation isn’t necessarily a problem, says Romesh Bhandari, one of the most controversial governors in independent India. “I think governors largely remain apolitical even if they have been active politicians. Their main objective is to protect the Constitution,” says the Congressman. Bhandari’s actions as the governor of Uttar Pradesh in the late Nineties were censured by the Allahabad High Court and the Supreme Court.

While claiming that he is proud of his tenure, Bhandari says “circumstances” make governors controversial. “The situation differs from state to state, and people will point fingers at you even when you are objective. Governors should act according to the Constitution and their conscience. That’s what I did,” he says.

Marwah also blames state leaders for pressurising governors. “State leaders tend to believe that a governor appointed by their party should always act on their behalf.”

The opinion is divided on how governor Bhardwaj’s actions will be viewed by the public in general. While a section of the Congress in Karnataka is accusing him of making the party unpopular, others say his actions will not have any impact on the people. “The governor has only been telling the truth. I am sure the people of Karnataka will view his public comments and actions objectively,” says Krishna Byregowda, Congress MLA of Karnataka.

The solution to the problem of friction between political parties of a state and the governor lies with the central leadership of political parties, say political observers. “Political parties should take a look at the history, and at Supreme Court judgments and take a unanimous decision that only apolitical people will be appointed governors,” says Kashyap. Till that happens, the office of the governor will be under a cloud.