Karnataka’s ‘Resort Politics’ Resurface Amid Hung Assembly

Karnataka has always been infamous for its resort politics, as is evident from the precedents.

(Photo: iStock/Altered by The Quint)

Karnataka, for a tourist, offers a kind of ethereal calm that is almost unmatched. This, however, disappears at the time of elections, just like the countless sea waves washing the sandy contours of the Karnataka shores.

The eternal disquiet on political discourse among its population is palpable and has been truly mirrored in the hopelessly fractured verdict of the recently held Assembly elections.

The Governor’s Dilemma

In this circumstance, all eyes are on the state Governor and his discretionary powers to decide the Chief Minister. However, these discretionary powers are not beyond judicial review, and any illegal and arbitrary decision taken against the constitutional provisions and conventions is liable to intervention by the courts.

The Constitution does not offer any specific guidelines to the Governor for the appointment of a Chief Minister in such circumstances. However, more often than not, governors have invited the leader of the single largest party to form the government.

Under the Constitutional Convention, the Governor is compelled to invite the single largest party to form the government and give it the opportunity to prove majority on the floor of the house. It is a well-settled position of the Supreme Court that a Constitutional Convention is as binding as any other law. A fractured mandate means that the government will have to be a coalition, but the responsibility of stitching such a coalition lies with the single largest party, and as such, the first opportunity ought to be given to them.

Precedents to Look To

As per the Sarkaria Commission’s Report (reiterated in the Punchhi Commission Report and  endorsed by the Supreme  Court in Nabam Rebia and Bamang Felix v. Deputy Speaker, Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly & Ors, (2016) 8 SCC 1), the Governor is supposed to  go by the following order in the appointment of the Chief Minister:

• The leader of the majority party in the legislature;
• In case there is no majority party in the legislature, then the leader of the pre-poll alliance parties, who is in a position to form the government;
• In case there is no majority of the pre-poll alliance in the legislature, then the leader of the single largest party in a position to form the government;
• In case the single largest party is not in a position to form the government, then the leader of the post-poll alliance parties may be called to form the government.

In 1952, all the opposition parties in Madras formed the United Democratic Front under the leadership of T Prakasham who had a strength of 166 members and the Congress had a strength of 155 members out of 321 members. Governor  Sri Prakasa appointed C Rajagopalachari, the leader of Congress Party, as the chief minister.

In the Rajasthan Assembly Elections in 1967, the Congress Party had won 88 seats and become the single largest party.

There were also non-Congress parties who claimed majority support of 93 members in a House of 183 members, but the Governor invited the leader of the Congress Party, ML Sukhadia to form the government.

In the Haryana Vidhan Sabha Elections, 2009, the Congress Party got 40 seats and Indian National Lok Dal got 31 out of total 90 seats. The governor had invited  the largest single party leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda to form the government.

The precedents and legal position supports inviting the largest party. But this had not been followed in the case of Bihar when in 2017, Nitish Kumar  broke away from RJ(D) and again got invited to form the government when RJ(D) was the single largest party.

In 2017, the Governor of Goa, however, lost no time in appointing Manohar Parrikar of the Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP) as the chief minister, the party which could get only 13 out the total 40 seats, while Congress had 17 seats. Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram had accused the BJP of ‘stealing’ elections in Goa, saying a party which comes second has ‘no right’ to form the government.

Now that Congress has done the same thing and has offered its support to the JD(S), HD Kumaraswamy has wasted no time in accepting the offer. He wrote a letter to the governor, that he has accepted the offer from the Congress and has sought an appointment from him.

Congress has offered support to keep BJP out, as trends in the final stages showed the saffron party may land just short of a majority. If the Governor of Karnataka asks the BJP to form the government, a large number of JD(S) MLAs will have to be confined to the resorts.

The Last Resort

The only way BJP can prove majority on the floor is by breaking the JD(S). This will not be a new phenomenon for Karnataka. During the 2017 Rajya Sabha elections, the Congress brought all its Gujarat MLAs to a resort near Bengaluru to prevent them from defecting under pressure from the BJP.

Karnataka has the reputation of being the hub of “resort politics”.

In 1984, when the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh legislators were brought to Bengaluru by NT Rama Rao, he had to face a trust vote and for one month, his friend, the then Karnataka Chief Minister Ramakrishna Hegde, accommodated the legislators at a resort in Devanahalli.

Later, Congress Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh of Maharashtra packed his MLAs off to Bengaluru in 2002, till he won his trust vote. Now, all eyes are on the zgovernor, and all TV cameras will be trained on the resorts where the MLAs will be lodged.

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(The author is a member of AAP's think tank 'India Dialogue' and associate member of Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA). He also works as a freelance writer and speaks on international, political and strategic affairs. He can be reached @rakeshsinha65. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

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