Ram Navami, one of the Hindu festivals that fall in March-April every year, following eight days of fasting and worship of goddess Durga, is also celebrated as Lord Ram’s birthday. For the last few years it has also been intensely ritualised with processions being taken out in different parts of north India by party-affiliated local Hindu organisations. Any procession, regardless of the religion of the group taking it out, has to obtain prior permission of police. However, this year, and perhaps in some cases last year too, either no permission was obtained or processions were taken out despite the denial of permission.The sectarian temperature in India has been rising since 2014, often leading to avoidable violence. It has become a practice now to defiantly raise provocative slogans in front of mosques falling on the route of the procession, with police blinking at it.Six states where violence has been severe this year are Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, Gujarat, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. Of these, Bihar and West Bengal are non-BJP-ruled states. Yet, Union home minister Amit Shah, in a rather crass way, declared on April 2 in Nawada, Bihar, that “hamare shasan mein dange nahin hote (riots do not take place under our rule)”.West Bengal stands out because the Modi government has been trying hard to win the state and has been using the office of governor to take on the Mamata Banerjee government. The earlier governor, Jagdeep Dhankhar, was elevated to the post of Vice-President of India for his stellar role in West Bengal.As violence broke out in Howrah district of West Bengal on the Ram Navami day and the state administration got down to dealing with it, reportedly by arresting 36 people, Shah lost no time in dialling governor C.V. Ananda Bose, asking him to take stock of the situation and order appropriate action by police.Police have been slow and partisan in reacting to and taking action during riots across the country irrespective of the party in power and chief minister. This has been corroborated by various research studies. While “public order” and police are state responsibilities according to entries 1 and 2 of the State List in Schedule VII of the constitution, entries 2A (brought in by the 42nd Amendment) and 80 empower the Union government to step in if the situation gets out of control. In any case, the Union home ministry has the right to enquire from a state government regarding the public order situation created by a riot and the resultant violence.But who should the Union government ask – elected chief minister or President-appointed governor? Shah spoke to the West Bengal governor to take stock of the situation, although the chief minister and the governor had already held a confidential meeting to review the measures taken by the state government.Even though there is no clarity in the constitution regarding who should the Union government consult regarding any deterioration in any field, an outbreak of violence, communal violence in particular, acquires a serious exigency in which the union government would either like to be briefed or step in – in accordance with its constitutional powers and responsibilities.According to media reports, Mamata Banerjee did follow her duty in accordance with Article 167 to brief the governor, whether on her own or on the governor’s asking. The governor must have communicated that to the union government, but obviously did not feel the need to act in his discretion [Article 163(2)].Amit Shah cannot be faulted constitutionally for calling up the governor. However, political propriety demanded that he engage with the elected leader and the government. Furthermore, riots took place in six states, but Shah chose to speak to the governor of just one state and issued a warning to another state – both ruled by non-BJP parties. In neither state did he speak to the chief minister – Mamata Banerjee or Nitish Kumar. He was completely silent about Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat.Ajay K. Mehra is a political scientist. He was an Atal Bihari Vajpayee Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, 2019–21.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.