After deciding to wage a political battle over the crisis in Rajasthan, Congress on Monday introduced high-ranking leader P Chidambaram and three former Union Law Ministers, Salman Khurshid, Kapil Sibal, and Ashwani Kumar, to confront the Governor of Rajasthan Kalraj Mishra for his refusal to accept Ashok Gehlot’s cabinet recommendation to hold an Assembly session, apparently to demonstrate his majority.
The party also took to the streets and held protests outside Raj Bhavans in all state capitals.
Chidambaram said that, in his “personal vision,” Sachin Pilot, who is leading the rebellion against Gehlot, appears to be “fully in the embrace of the BJP,” and questioned the silence of the former deputy CM when convening the session.
He said: “… In fact, he should be the first to stand up and say, please call an Assembly session; then we will know which group he belongs to and what he will do. He has argued that he belongs to Congress. He maintains that Gehlot has lost his majority, so he should join Congress to tell the Governor … to call a session. ” What Pilot will do in the session “is his decision, but why doesn’t he say anything about calling a session,” he asked.
Recalling the court rulings in the context of Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Karnataka, which he said had fallen heavily on the governors, Chidambaram said: “Despite these sentences and the declarations of law, the governor of Rajasthan has stalled … a perfectly valid request of the Rajasthan Council of Ministers to convene a session of the Assembly. ”
He said the governor has absolutely no discretion in the matter.
In a letter to Governor Mishra, Khurshid, Sibal and Kumar wrote that the delay in convening the Assembly session “has resulted in avoidable constitutional stagnation.” “We believe that according to the established conventions of the Constitution, the principles of parliamentary democracy, the relevant articles of the Constitution and the authorized pronouncements of the Supreme Court, the Governor is obliged to act on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers in a matter of convening the State Assembly, “they declared.
They said that the governor’s office, as foreseen in the constitutional scheme, is “beyond the restrictions and compulsions of partisan politics so that its owner can act freely and fairly to defend the Constitution.”
They wrote: “Having served as Union ministers of law and justice for different periods of time and as students of constitutional law, we have the clear opinion that the established legal position requires the governor to call the Assembly session in accordance with the state cabinet council.
“Any departure from the constitutional position established in the current circumstances would be an avoidable denial of his oath of office and create a constitutional crisis.”
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