Agusta, Delhi Jal Board: CBI to be used to force out UPA governors?

Faced with resistance from UPA-appointed governors who the new government is keen to replace, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has indicated that it will not shy of using threat of criminal investigations against the incumbents to have its way. Reports suggested that the BJP is determined to use the ongoing CBI probe into the Agusta Westland VVIP helicopter deal to force out Governor BV Wanchoo in Goa and MK Narayanan in West Bengal. The CBI has until now maintained that it needs to question both these governors. According to a report in The Times of India, the Centre is now taking the stand that a fair probe would mandate the questioning of the duo. [caption id=“attachment_697738” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] West Bengal governor MK Narayanan was NSA when the Agusta Westland deal was finalised. PTI[/caption] Similarly, in the case of Kerala governor Sheila Dikshit, a CBI probe into alleged irregularities in the Delhi Jal Board could be used to nudge her out. In the case of the former two, the CBI has said earlier that Wanchoo and Narayanan were involved in the decision making process in the run-up to the deal being awarded to Agusta and would therefore have to be questioned. “The Centre is of the view that there was no constitutional bar to examine governors as witnesses in a criminal case, especially when the CBI suspects that they had played a significant role in the lowering of parameters to enable AgustaWestland shake off disqualification and bag the contract,” the TOI report said. When the UPA had sought legal opinion on the matter, then solicitor general Mohan Parasaran had said the Constitution offers governors immunity from criminal investigation in a criminal case. The NDA government believes Parasaran’s opinion was erroneous. The Agusta Westland case pertains to a Rs 3,600-crore deal for purchasing 12 AW 101 helicopters meant for use by VVIPs. The CBI is probing allegations of kickbacks and whether AgustaWestland came back into the reckoning for the deal when the mandatory service ceiling of the helicopter was reduced from 6,000 metres to 4,500 metres. The CBI named 12 people, including former IAF chief SP Tyagi, as accused in its FIR. At the time the deal was being discussed in the UPA regime, Narayanan was National Security Adviser while Wanchoo was head of the elite Special Protection Group. The CBI believes they were present at key meetings where the specifications of the service ceiling were discussed. The Delhi Jal Board scams pertain to allegedly rigged bids for multi-crore contracts. Dikshit, as chief minister of Delhi, was then chief of the Delhi Jal Board. As Firstpost has reported , the NDA’s apparent rush to replace appointees of the previous political dispensation in power at the Centre is neither surprising nor unprecedented. The Janata government in 1977 replaced appointees made by the previous Congress government. In October 1980, the dismissal of then Tamil Nadu Governor Prabhudas Patwari established the principle that governors serve at the President’s “pleasure” under Article 156 (1), which in turn can be used by the Prime Minister to dismiss any Governor for political reasons, and without assigning any cause. In more recent years, such mass resignations have become quite the norm. When the UPA formed the government in 2004, it similarly replaced governors including Babu Parmanand (Haryana), Vishnu Kant Shastri (Uttar Pradesh), Kidar Nath Sahani (Goa) and Kailashpati Mishra (Gujarat). For now, however, the NDA government has not officially issued any threat to the governors, preferring to lay on the pressure indirectly. While Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh declared that if he had been in the position of any of these governors, he would have voluntarily resigned, a Business Standard report  also said Home Secretary Anil Goswami was understood to have made phone calls to some governors suggesting that they resign. These include Dikshit, Narayanan and Maharashtra governor K Sankaranarayanan. Oddly enough, despite its own track record from 2004, the Congress has taken offence to the move. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, has called it political vendetta. Apart from some former bureaucrats appointed governors, there are reportedly 19 governors who were formerly active Congress leaders. For now, Uttar Pradesh governor BL Joshi is the only one to have resigned. His term had ended recently and he had been sworn in for a fresh term. Rajasthan Governor Margaret Alva met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a visit described as a “courtesy call”. She is also scheduled to call on President Pranab Mukherjee. Alva’s term ends in August. Meanwhile, following previous reports that the veterans in the BJP who could not be accommodated in Narendra Modi’s council of ministers – the government followed an unofficial age ceiling of 70 years for ministers – could get governorships, some of these seniors have begun to wait for that phone call about moving to a Raj Bhavan. A report in The Indian Express  lists Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha, Kailash Joshi, Kalyan Singh, Kesarinath Tripathi, Lalji Tandon, Balram Das Tandon, Vijay Malhotra and O Rajagopal as among the names being considered.