New Delhi: The April 8 judgment of the Supreme Court on the role of governors regarding Bills passed by state assemblies is being rightly viewed as a ‘landmark’ for having re-established the constitutional norm as stated in Article 200.However, the judgement of the bench led by Justice J.B. Pardiwala must also be sieved through a political lens; as a personal reprimand to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his office.The argument on this count is only fair and fitting as the man in question, Tamil Nadu governor R.N. Ravi, was handpicked by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in 2021 to not only become a veritable thorn in an opposition-run state which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been eyeing to conquer politically, but also to deliver, back in 2015, Modi’s first big move as the ‘effectual doer’ as against ‘70 years of inaction’ by its adversary, the Congress.As the April 8 judgement of the apex court stated that Ravi’s action as governor was “illegal and erroneous in law”, students of politics must also then trace in it the failure of that top decision-making process that had cherry-picked Ravi keeping politics in mind.An Indian Police Service officer better known for his stint in the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Central Bureau of Investigation till 2012, Ravi is reckoned in bureaucratic circles also for cornering plum postings after retirement in the Modi era, such as chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and as deputy national security adviser.Post retirement, he became one of the prime minister’s trusted aides assigned to push his party’s propaganda around him – that ‘Modi hain toh mumkin hain’ (‘Where others can’t, Modi can’).In pursuit of this, Ravi in August 2015 was announced as the Union government’s interlocutor for the Naga peace talks. He famously became a signatory of the Framework Agreement signed by New Delhi with the Isak Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Natalie (NSCN) to deliver the peace accord.Festering since independence, the Naga issue was the ideal matter whereby Modi could be projected as the strong man who could deliver what others couldn’t. Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee failed to solve it.That August day in Delhi in 2015, as Modi looked on from a distance, the smile on Ravi’s face while handing over a copy of the agreement to NSCN chief Muivah was borne of a confidence to deliver a deal that could further Modi’s public image.Photo: PTI.On looking back after nearly a decade has passed since that photo-op, one can only say that Ravi merely succeeded in doing what a number of IB officers in the northeast handling actors of insurgencies brought to the table for a peace deal by the Ministry of Home Affairs are often accused of – devising divisions within those armed groups to weaken them so that at least a section of them could be herded to Delhi to sign a ‘historic’ peace deal.While Ravi is accused in Nagaland of succeeding in delivering only the first of these (accentuating divisions between stakeholders), he sadly couldn’t end up achieving the final outcome of that alleged strategy – no Naga Accord was signed.Worse, in October 2020, Muivah wrote to the prime minister accusing Ravi of being the reason why the accord had reached a deadlock; he sought the PMO’s intervention to remove Ravi.That request also came against the backdrop of Ravi being made governor of Nagaland in 2019 – apparently to help him deliver the peace deal. What we saw instead was that even the state government, led by the Nationalist Democratic People’s Party, an ally of the BJP, began openly complaining about Ravi’s undue interference.The locking of horns between Ravi and the Neiphiu Rio government over the law and order situation continued; amidst it came a news report about supposed misfeasance by the Nagaland governor, whereby two widowed state government employees were allegedly forced to vacate their flats in Delhi so that Ravi could keep his bungalow granted under the Nagaland quota.That was when he as governor anyway had a suite in Delhi’s Nagaland House. More on this can be read here.While Ravi failed to deliver the primary objective behind his being sent by the Modi administration to Nagaland, his stint as governor of a state only grew. In September 2021, he was dispatched to the Raj Bhavan in the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-ruled Tamil Nadu.In that opposition-ruled state, Ravi remained in the headlines for primarily stalling every move of the opposition-run state. Be it indefinitely holding Bills, walking out of the assembly in session without delivering the governor’s address, an open face-off with chief minister M.K. Stalin, the list only grew with time.Most of those incidents were against the constitutional norm. Ultimately, it led the state government to go to court against Ravi, which led to the April 8 order of the Supreme Court castigating him for his actions, especially for stalling Bills passed by the state assembly.The April 8 order places Ravi in the rare squad of governors chided by the country’s highest court for having gone against constitutional norms.In 2005, the then-Chief Justice of India Y.K. Sabharwal had ruled against Buta Singh, then serving as governor of Bihar, for having suggested to the Manmohan Singh government to impose President’s Rule in an opposition-ruled state.The Supreme Court had passed strictures against Singh for having misled the Union council of ministers into performing an unconstitutional act. The order had said that it “reeked of a malafide act”.The court’s strictures against Singh led him to resign as Bihar governor, which brings us to ask: will Ravi, found carrying out actions that are “illegal and erroneous”, also follow suit?Ravi clearly failed to add to Modi’s ‘doer’ image as envisaged in Nagaland by failing to deliver the Naga accord; the April 8 order indicates that he also failed to help the prime minister further his carefully crafted image as the leader who ‘respects’ the constitution.Will the Modi government then do with Ravi what was rightly done by Manmohan Singh with Buta Singh?Or will Modi and his PMO pack him off to his next political assignment?Speaking of political assignments, Ravi, besides batting for the Modi government from the Raj Bhavan in Chennai in violation of the constitution, has also been helping the BJP-RSS take over Auroville; he has been the chairman of the Auroville Foundation since October 2021.More on it can be read in this investigative report by The News Minute published on April 1.
