Decision to sack Kamla Beniwal not political, says Venkaiah Naidu amid oppn uproar

Amid charges of political vendetta, the BJP has defended its decision to sack Mizoram governor Kamla Beniwal, saying that it was prompted by serious allegations against her.

The Congress led opposition has attacked the BJP for its decision, with spokesman Manish Tewari saying that the current BJP dispensation which had made such a hue and cry about transfers when the UPA did it, were now guilty of the same thing they had accused the Congress of. “The difference is that the UPA transfers were all legal”, he said. “Governors are constitutional authorities. They cannot be trampled upon like this.”

Inside the house, Sharad Yadav of the JD(U) joined the Congress protests, by telling the Rajya Sabha that the removal of Beniwal was illegal.

Naresh Aggarwal of the Samajwadi Party concurred, saying, “Political vendetta around the constitutional high office isn’t good for the country.”

The BJP has however stood firm.

“Action was taken within rules, as per Constitution, there was no politics involved. There are serious allegations”, Naidu said outside Parliament.

The purported reason according to this report in NDTV, are land scam allegations against Beniwal. According to the report, “She is accused of claiming land from the government after stating in false affidavits that she had tilled the land for 14 to 16 hours a day for 50 years, even when she was a minister in the state’s Congress government”

However the sentiment is that Beniwal is being punished for taking on Narendra Modi while she was governor, and he was Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Beniwal, who is a former member of the Congress party, had often been at loggerheads with then Chief Minister Narendra Modi, most famously over the appointment of a state Lokayukta.

In August 2011, Dr Beniwal appointed Justice RA Mehta as the Lokayukta under Section 3 of the Gujarat Lokayukta Act, 1986, which gives the governor the right to appoint Lokayukta without consulting the government, when there has been an extreme delay in making the appointment.

In so doing, Beniwal bypassed the Narendra Modi government of Gujarat, which had not appointed anyone to the position since 2004.

Beniwal was sacked as Governor of Mizoram just two months before her tenure comes to an end.

“The President has directed that Dr (Smt) Kamla shall cease to hold the office of the Governor of Mizoram,” a Rashtrapati Bhavan communique said tonight, exactly a month after she was shifted to Aizwal from Ahmedabad.

With inputs from Agencies