If a governor is not minded to read a speech prepared by the Ministry, he should ideally resign his office before expressing any views in the public sphere.
Published Feb 17, 2024 | 12:00 PM ⚊ Updated Feb 17, 2024 | 12:00 PM
Governor RN Ravi speaking at the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly on 12 February. (Screengrab)
India follows a parliamentary system of democracy. It does not follow a Presidential pattern of Government. Justice Krishna Iyer, writing for the Supreme Court in a seven-judge Constitution Bench in Samsher Singh, pithily put it, “Not the Potomac, but the Thames, fertilises the flow of the Yamuna”.
Shorn of its riverine imagery, Justice Iyer meant that we do not have an executive President as they do in Washington DC, but a constitutional republic akin to the constitutional monarchy in London.
Like the English monarch, the President is the head of the State and embodies it but does almost nothing without Cabinet advice. In the days of the restoration of the monarchy in seventeenth-century England, the Earl of Rochester trolled Charles II with a teasing epigram:
“We have a pretty witty king,
Whose word no man relies on?
He never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.”
To this, Charles supposedly replied, “That’s true, for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers”.
Thus, even in an absolute monarchy, the King who spoke for himself acted only through his ministers. But gradually, the monarch’s role became that of a constitutional figurehead who spoke only what was advised by his ministers who acted in his name.
However, one of the traditions that survived in the Westminster form of Government was the monarch’s ‘speech from the throne’. The monarch’s speech was never the personal opinion of Queen Elizabeth II, King Charles III, or any of their predecessors from William III (William III and Mary II signed the English Bill of Rights, which set the stage for constitutional monarchy in Britain) downwards.
It was always a speech written by the Government of the day and delivered by a monarch, who, in subsequent years, could probably deliver a contrary or different speech if another government wrote it for them.
After the speech, which outlined Government policy and priorities for the coming year, there was a debate on a motion to thank the monarch. Government supporters thanked the monarch for the contents of the speech, while the opposition thanked the monarch but derided the speech’s contents.
Thus, it was recommended that the monarch, while reading the speech, showed no signs of endorsing it or disagreeing with it. It was read in a flat monotone and with a stoic expression. It ensured that the monarch did not seem to express a preference towards any legislative actions or political party.
In a federal structure, at a state level, the same position applicable to constitutional monarchs and presidents prevails with respect to governors. The governor of a state is not a British Governor-General enforcing the edicts of the Viceroy at the Centre. Justice Krishna Iyer’s dictum was laid down in the context of certain actions of the then-Governor of Punjab.
Given the constitutional background detailed above, the act of Governor R N Ravi in totally refusing to read the speech prepared for him by the Government of Tamil Nadu is nothing short of constitutional heresy.
The Raj Bhavan stated in a press release that the address “contained numerous passages with misleading claims and facts and reading them would have amounted to Governor’s address becoming a constitutional travesty”.
The Raj Bhavan is quite simply in the wrong. A governor is entitled to have his or her own views with regard to measures, but all such views are expressed privately with the Government of the day, where the governor is expected to be a friend, philosopher, and guide. Governors and presidents are not elected to rule; they are selected to reign.
If a governor is not minded to read a speech prepared by the Ministry, he should ideally resign his office before expressing any views in the public sphere. There have been instances when governors have skipped a paragraph or two.
As Governor of Maharashtra, S M Krishna, former Chief Minister of Karnataka, was required to read a speech that alluded to the Karnataka-Maharashtra boundary dispute. After securing legal opinion, the relevant paragraphs were deemed to be read without being uttered. The rest of the speech was faithfully read out aloud.
Governors Dharma Vira in Punjab in 1969, P Sathasivam in Kerala in 2018, and Tatagatha Roy in Tripura in 2017 also omitted a paragraph or two.
There were governors, like D C Pavate in Punjab in 1969 and A P Sharma in West Bengal in the early 1980s, who persuaded their governments to withdraw certain pre-drafted paragraphs from their speeches.
Till now, there has not been a case where a governor or president has junked the entire speech that the Ministry had drafted. In Tamil Nadu’s case, the Speaker of the assembly had to step in and read out the governor’s speech. Certain exchanges between the governor and the treasury benches were also expunged from the records of the assembly.
Governor Ravi may well heed Oliver Cromwell’s great admonition to the Long Parliament: “You have sat for too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”.
(The author is a Senior Advocate designated by the Supreme Court of India. Views are personal.)
