Thiruvananthapuram: Just a day before the deadline set by the Governor for VCs to submit their explanation, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told Governor Arif Mohammed Khan not to act bigger than he was Constitutionally capable of.
“Usually, governors keep away from active politics. Here, a person is trying to create a parallel government. He is calling press conferences at the Raj Bhavan, wants ministers sacked and dismisses senate and syndicate members,” the Chief Minister said while inaugurating the LDF convention here on Wednesday to protect institutions of higher learning in Kerala. “If someone thinks that all powers are concentrated in him, let him do so but only in his fantasies,” the Chief Minister said.
The Chief Minister said Khan should learn to differentiate his roles as Governor and Chancellor. “Only the Governor has the protection of the Constitution, not the Chancellor. A Chancellor has no special protection other than what emanates from university laws. The Chancellor can use only those powers laid down in the university statutes, nothing more,” the Chief Minister said.
This being the case, Vijayan said the Governor's role ended with the appointment of the vice chancellor. “Once the appointment is made, the Chancellor has exhausted all his powers. He has no scope to intervene further,” he said. If at all action has to be taken against a VC, the Chief Minister said it could be done only on the basis of the existing university laws.
Under the statutes, a VC can be removed only on two occasions. One, the misuse of his powers as VC. Two, misappropriation of university funds. “There were no complaints on any of these two counts in the case of any VCs,” the Chief Minister said. “There was no way the Chancellor could have acted in such a situation and still he issued an order asking nine VCs to tender their resignations within 24 hours. That this was disapproved of by the Court is proof that the Chancellor had acted in violation of the law,” the Chief Minister said.
It is this inflated opinion of his powers that had also caused the Governor to pompously withdraw his pleasure in a minister, the Chief Minister said. “There is an elected ministry here to decide all that. And above all this is the will of the people,” Vijayan said.
On Wednesday, Vijayan was far more withering in his castigation of the Governor than during his press conference on October 30. He said the Governor was demonstrating a “desperation to wield powers beyond his remit”. Even while doing this, the Chief Minister said that Khan was failing to fulfil his Constitutional obligations.
“He called the media to say that he won't sign the bills passed by the Assembly. But in the same breath he says he had not read these bills,” Vijayan said, and added: “Does this mean that he has some divine powers to decide on matters of such importance even without reading the bills.”
The Chief Minister said that three of the bills the Governor had refused to give his assent to were related to the functioning of universities. “This will only result in the sudden freeze of university functioning,” he said. In addition, Vijayan alleged that the Governor was trying to shortlist names that were earlier rejected by the Search Committees of universities. “ If someone charges the Governor with a vested interest, the person cannot be blamed,” he said.
The Chief Minister reiterated his earlier charge that the Governor was functioning as the tool of the Sangh Parivar. He hinted that the Governor's actions like dismissing senate members and constituting an illegal two-member search committee were intended to squeeze in RSS-minded people into the institutions of higher learning. “Everyone knows these are attempts to saffronise the higher education sector in Kerala,” the Chief Minister said.
He said the framers of the Constitution, while providing legal immunity to governors, had not anticipated a situation where governors would act in a brazenly partisan manner. He quoted the Madras High Court order in the NEET Bill case to elaborate on his point.
This is what the Madras High Court said. “The protection (to the Governor) has been given by the framers of the Constitution with the hope and trust that they would perform their Constitutional functions promptly and there would not be any situation that they would be called to give explanation and that they would be questioned in a court of law.”
The Madras High Court also said it was aware of the need to arrive at a new course of action in the event of the trust being broken. The Court's words: “When the situation changes and the present kind of situation (Tamil Nadu government-Governor standoff) rises, a different kind of approach has to be taken by the court in the interest of the public.”
The Chief Minister said that it was in this context that the court said that “extraordinary situations require extraordinary remedies”.
This also was a veiled warning to the Kerala governor that the LDF government would not shy away from taking “extraordinary measures” against him, including stripping him of the Chancellor's post.
“It is not inevitable that governors themselves should be chancellors. There are many universities without a chancellor,” Vijayan said.
