It’s rare for life’s biggest challenge to sneak up on you when you are touching 80. It doesn’t make the job any easier when you know the entire country is watching. For Vajubhai Bala, the legacy of his political life will be defined by how apolitical he can keep himself in the next few days.
Appointed the governor of Karnataka by the Modi government in September 2014, Bala must decide whether he will follow the letter of the constitution and judgments of the apex court and invite the post-poll coalition of Congress-JD(S) to form Karnataka’s next government, or follow his former political boss and kow tow to the BJP.
The 79-year-old spent the better part of his six decades as a BJP minister. He presented the Gujarat state budget a record 18 times. Few know him outside of Gujarat, those who do see him as a BJP loyalist enjoying the perks of Narendra Modi’s run at the Centre—a plush posting as governor in the fag end of his political career. It was after all Bala who had made way for Modi, fighting the first election of his life in 2002, to contest and win from the Rajkot (2) assembly constituency, a seat Bala had won seven straight times until then.
Bala’s credentials as an RSS worker are rock solid. He is one of the founders of the Gujarat Jan Sangh, the BJP’s political predecessor, who helped the saffron outfit grow in strength in Saurashtra, which was a Congress stronghold until the 1980s.
As Karnataka governor, he returned some legislations introduced by the Siddaramaiah government of the Congress but largely stuck to the rulebook, steering clear of fomenting controversies as a host of other BJP-appointed governors have developed a habit for in recent years.
Speaking of rulebooks, experts believe that there’s only one formation that Bala can invite to form Karnataka’s next government. The Congress-JD(S) has the numbers and the BJP doesn’t. Any move to the contrary would hurl the state into an inglorious and avoidable bout of horse-trading with the BJP itching to flex its financial and political might.
The delay in inviting the Congress-JD(S) combine may have led to some horse-trading already. The alliance’s CM candidate HD Kumaraswamy claimed on Wednesday that the BJP had offered his MLAs Rs 100 crore each and cabinet berths if they supported the BJP.
The governor should also remember the ruling of constitution bench of the Supreme Court in 2006. The governor has no option, the SC had ruled in the Bihar President’s rule case, but to invite any party or alliance, either pre-poll or post-poll, to form the government once he was satisfied that it commanded majority support in the assembly.
More recently, Bala’s counterparts in states like Manipur and Goa have preferred to invite post-poll alliances to form the government knowing that they had the numbers with them. In Manipur, the BJP won 21 seats and the Congress 28 in the 60-seat assembly but it was the BJP that eventually formed a government in alliance with other parties. Similarly, in the 40-strong Goa assembly, the BJP had won 13 seats and the Congress 17. And it was BJP again that managed to form an alliance.