After six months without one, Manipur has a new full-fledged Governor. Ajay Kumar Bhalla, a 1984 batch Assam-Meghalaya cadre IAS officer, who retired as home secretary in August 2024, is the choice for the state and he was sworn in on January 3. After Manipur’s last Governor, Anusuiya Uikey, prematurely retired (or was removed) in July 2024, before even completing a year and a half in office, Manipur’s Raj Bhavan was kept under the charge of Assam Governor Lakshman Acharya.
A soft-spoken woman of few words, Uikey did indicate she was not happy with how the Union government was dealing with the unprecedented violent conflict situation in Manipur towards the end of her rather short stay in office, and became even more forthright in making this charge after vacating office in interviews to several media outlets. Among others, she expressed surprise and consternation at the continued refusal of the prime minister Narendra Modi to visit the violence ravaged state. She also indicated that her reports from the state while she was in office were not heeded by the Union government.
This circumstance cannot but bring up the old debate on the post of the Governor and its continued relevance or otherwise. Is the office of the Governor merely ceremonial, or as Fali S. Nariman implied in The State of the Nation in the chapter on federalism, is it also meant to be the eye and ear of the Centre, therefore a legacy from the colonial past?
From history we know, to pacify the growing yearning for freedom amongst their colonial subjects, the British began introducing representative governments in their provinces by phases. Hence, the Government of India Act 1919 implemented the Montague-Chelmsford recommendations for administrative reforms. The Simon Commission Report did the same in shaping the administrative reforms introduced by the Government of India Act 1935. As provincial self-governance expanded and deepened, the role of the colonial Governor came to acquire a new relevance, and the inclination was for this institution to become the listening post for the colonial centre, addressing in the process the colonial government’s inherent suspicion of its subjects.
The uneasy question is, in India’s peculiar balance between a federal and unitary structure, has the institution of Governor come to be a tool to address the Centre’s unease and distrust of the federal states. More than this, the Governor’s office in recent decades, has become the extended arm of the party in power at the Centre, often going out of the way to help the same party gain the upper hand in power equations in the states. It has also become a tradition for state Governors to be changed whenever the ruling party at the Centre changed.
Uikey’s short gubernatorial term has once again demonstrated how powerless the office is except as a proxy of the Central government. This is implicit even in the Constitutional mandate assigned to the post. Article 156 says, though appointment is for a 5-year term, Governors hold office at the pleasure of the President. They can therefore be removed anytime they lose the pleasure of the President, which actually means the pleasure of the Union cabinet, for Article 74 says the President acts on its advice.
In the initial decades after Indian independence, the Centre’s apparent wariness of the ways of the states may have had some basis and justification, given the traumatic Partition and the reluctance with which several Princely States joined the Union. Nariman even hints that Article 3 of the Constitution was meant s a warning to rebellious former Princely States which have joined India that they can face severe consequences.
Manipur’s new Governor obviously is a very capable administrator given his professional background. Even then he cannot possibly circumvent the briefs of his office. The only time Governors can actually exercise their administrative acumen is when Article 356 is invoked in the event of a Constitutional or law-and-order breakdown in a state, or when the state is faced with a financial emergency. Bhalla’s appointment, indeed is read by many in this traumatised state as a prelude to such a measure. It however remains to be seen how far this prediction comes true.
This article was first published in The Telegraph. The original can be read HERE
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
