‘Budget session only after legal advice’: Punjab governor Purohit drops another letter bomb
Punjab governor Banwarilal Purohit responds terming chief minister Bhagwant Mann’s response as “unconstitutional” and “derogatory”
Punjab governor Banwarilal Purohit told chief minister Bhagwant Mann on Thursday that he will decide on summoning the state assembly for the budget session only after taking legal advice on the latter’s “unconstitutional and derogatory” tweet and letter in response to issues raised by him regarding the AAP government’s recent decisions.
The governor sent a letter to Mann to convey his position on the state cabinet’s decision two days ago regarding the summoning of the house of the legislature of the state. The state cabinet on Tuesday decided to convene the budget session of the Punjab assembly on March 3, following which the governor was requested to summon the house.
“Since your tweet and letter both are not only patently unconstitutional but extremely derogatory also, therefore, I am compelled to take legal advice on this issue. Only after getting legal advice, I will take a decision on your request,” Purohit wrote. The letter is likely to further flare up the long-running tussle between Mann and Purohit which has strained their relations.
The governor had, in a letter to Mann on February 13, raised questions about the selection of school principals for a training trip to Singapore, saying he received complaints of “malpractices and illegalities” in this regard.
The AAP government sent 36 government school principals to a professional teacher training seminar in Singapore from February 6 to 10. The governor also questioned the appointment of Guninderjit Singh Jawandha as the Punjab Information and Communication Technology (Punjab Infotech) chairman while pointing out that his name figured in a kidnapping and property grabbing case.
He had also raised questions about the promotion and posting of IPS officer Kuldeep Singh Chahal as the Jalandhar police commissioner; the presence of a non-official Naval Aggarwal in meetings of senior officers where sensitive and confidential matters of security of the country were discussed, and non-disbursal of scholarships to 2 lakh SC students. Claiming that Mann “never cared to reply” to his letters in the past and treated “all my queries with contempt”, Purohit told the CM that people elected him (Mann) for running the administration as per the Constitution and not according to his “whims and fancies” and that he is bound to furnish any information sought by Raj Bhavan. He also asked Mann to reply to his letter within a fortnight, failing which he would be compelled to take legal advice for further action.
Mann promptly took to the microblogging site Twitter to tell the governor that he and his government are accountable to 3-crore Punjabis according to the Constitution and not to any governor appointed by the central government.
On February 14, the CM sent a written reply, questioning the criteria adopted for appointing governors. “You have asked me on what basis the principals selected for training in Singapore. The People of Punjab want to ask, on what basis are the governors in different states selected by the central government in the absence of any specific qualification in the Indian Constitution?” he wrote. The governor quoted the contents of the CM’s tweet and letter verbatim in his communication. The acrimonious back-and-forth between Purohit and Mann started about six months ago when the former withdrew permission to the AAP government in September last year to hold a special session of the assembly to bring a confidence motion and later sought to know the legislative business on the agenda in special session.
A few weeks later, the governor also rejected the chief minister’s decision to appoint cardiologist Dr Gurpreet Singh Wander as the vice-chancellor of Baba Farid University of Health Sciences and then also later asked Mann to remove Satbir Singh Gosal as the vice-chancellor of Punjab Agricultural University, dubbing his appointment as “illegal”. The governor’s trips to border districts, during which he raised serious questions about the easy availability of drugs and illegal sand mining, also disconcerted the ruling AAP which has repeatedly accused him of acting at the behest of the BJP.
AAP’s state chief spokesperson Malvinder Singh Kang said that according to the Constitution, the governor is a nominal head of the state and will act on the aid and advice of the council of ministers. “In our democratic set-up, people elect their government, and the governor cannot interfere directly in the day-to-day affairs of the government. Unfortunately, in non-BJP-ruled states such as Punjab, Delhi, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu, the BJP is interfering through the governors. It is against the spirit of the Constitution,” he said, accusing Purohit of “playing politics.”
