High court has validated President's rule: Subhash C Kashyap

Interview with Former secretary general, Lok Sabha

Constitutional expert and former secretary general of the Lok Sabha, Subhash C Kashyap, speaks to Aditi Phadnis on the constitutional intricacies of the political crisis in Uttarakhand. Edited excerpts:

What do you have to say about the Uttarakhand High Court's directive, ordering a floor test in the Assembly on March 31?

I am yet to read the court's order. There are, however, a few pertinent questions that arise from what I have come to know about the order from the media.

Has the court stayed the Speaker's order on disqualifying the nine rebel Congress legislators? Has the court stayed the Presidential proclamation that put Uttarakhand under central rule? And lastly, and it is related to the previous question, whether Harish Rawat will face the floor test as chief minister or leader of the Congress?

So, has the court stayed the Speaker's order on disqualification?

I believe that it has stayed the Speaker's order by allowing the nine rebel legislators to vote in the floor test. It is true their votes will be kept separately, but counted nonetheless.

The floor test will make it evident whether at all these legislators had voted with the government on the Appropriation Bill. If not, the Appropriation Bill will be deemed not to have been passed and the government will fall. The court would later look into the petition filed by the nine Congress rebels challenging the Speaker's decision to disqualify them and take a decision on the merits of the case.

Secondly, the court seems to have maintained the validity of President's rule. After the imposition of central rule, a government does not exist in Uttarakhand. The court seems to have asked Rawat to take the floor test as the leader of the Congress.

The floor test brings us back to the situation that had prevailed when the Appropriation Bill was presented on March 18.

But what about Parliament ratifying President's Rule when it meets on April 25?

That is a question for a later date, and shouldn't exercise us now. I think, as things stand, the entire issue will become clearer in the next few days.

Rawat has purportedly been caught on camera offering money to rebel Congress legislators.

That is again a separate issue and separate penal provisions would deal with it.