 "Kiran Bedi")
The replacement of Kiran Bedi as lieutenant governor (LG) of Puducherry with Tamilsai Soundararajan, who was moved to the Union Territory from her position as Telangana governor earlier this week, has sparked off fevered speculation. The Assembly elections are due in Puducherry in a few weeks.
To summarily remove a lieutenant governor (without posting her somewhere else as is the common practice) sends a message of humiliation and disgrace. Political analysts in neighbouring Tamil Nadu were quick to pronounce triumphantly that what they’d always suspected was a fact: Recognising the overreach of the LG and embarrassed at her interference, the Centre had dropped Bedi as a punishment.
Nothing could be further than the truth. While it is a fact that Bedi has been running a relentless campaign against the UT government’s inefficiency’ and ‘corruption’, and as is her wont, aggressively and abrasively, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA)’s faith in her remains unshaken. “She will get another assignment soon. Women of integrity like her are valued by our organisation,” said a senior member of the party.
In tandem, several MLAs from the ruling Congress have crossed over to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the government, the BJP claims, has slid into a minority. It is just a matter of time before the government led by V Narayanasamy is dismissed (the floor test is on Monday), the central rule is imposed, and the state heads for elections — not under a caretaker chief minister, but under the central rule. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Puducherry on February 25. Expect dramatic developments before that.
Bedi’s case
Bedi has been alleging malfeasance by the Narayanasamy government for several years now — to the point where the chief minister told the people of Puducherry helplessly that the LG had referred 10 cases against him to the CBI.
What he was doing was what Opposition chief ministers have done hundreds of times in the past: Build a political movement against the Centre in a Centre versus state narrative that might or might not be true.
Bedi’s supporters, on the other hand, say she just couldn’t stand by as a mute spectator as the chief minister and his cronies ran the state to the ground.
The first issue on which the state government and the lieutenant governor’s office butted heads was admissions in medical colleges. In 2017, at the instance of the LG, the Medical Council of India (MCI) cancelled the admission of 238 students in several private medical colleges in Puducherry. At the heart of this was the complaint of the LG, who said merit had been sacrificed for money because these seats were “sold”.
The issue related to the national eligibility-cum-entrance test (NEET) for medical colleges. All states were asked to designate a counselling authority to prepare a list of successful candidates. Puducherry, too, set up a centralised admission committee (Centac) but some private colleges admitted students directly, ignoring the panel. Bedi’s complaint is based on parents who wrote to her, that despite paying lakhs of rupees, their children were denied admission. Bedi says the state government’s list of successful candidates did not tally with the Centac’s list. As many as 55 students were directly affected by the order. Bedi then referred the matter to the CBI.
According to the chief minister, the CBI informed him that the complaint against officers involved in the “defective” list was not being pursued by it. Bedi’s office said it was.
In 2018, the Congress hit back. Two MLAs asked Bedi to come clean on invitations from her office to private companies, seeking funds to desilt water bodies in Puducherry which would qualify as CSR activity for the companies. Simultaneously, the Congress passed a resolution in the Assembly, asking the LG to cease and desist from trying to run the government from the Raj Bhavan.
But Bedi was undeterred from her path to “end corruption” in the UT. In a letter to her, AIADMK MLA Vaiyapuri Manikandan complained that during the pandemic, the government-run Pondicherry Distilleries Limited (PDL), a blending and bottling unit of arrack, the ‘authorities’ sold the entire stock of PDL in the black market for a huge sum, causing extensive losses to the government. Though all liquor and arrack shops in Puducherry were sealed during the lockdown, the distillery remained open. Just before the lockdown was imposed, PDL had procured 1 million litre of RS in six tankers. What happened to the stock? the MLA asked.
The LG took days, not weeks, to refer the letter to the CBI for an enquiry.
Understandably, the state government has been feeling hunted and cornered. Bedi’s crusade had come in handy to fight incumbency. The central plank of the Narayanasamy government was developing nicely as a “I will struggle till I die to deliver my beloved Puducherry from the Centre” theme, much like the one Narendra Modi deployed in Gujarat as chief minister from 2009 to 2013, including his campaign against Governor Kamla Beniwal.
Now the face has changed. So the edge of the campaign is lost. Narayanasamy will either have to find another person as a target —it can’t very well be Narendra Modi — or another issue. And as the government heads into a minority, he will have to fight his erstwhile colleagues as well.
