With Jung Gone, Both Centre and Delhi Governments Need To Wind Down Their ‘Jang’

A friend of mine would constantly carp about her boss, questioning his competence, intelligence and integrity. He was forced out when he got a new boss and suddenly my friend had nothing but good words for him. I had wondered then whether that bit about never speaking ill of the dead extended to sacked bosses as well.

No, this friend is not Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal – I have only interacted with him thrice professionally – who, after using some pretty harsh words for Najeeb Jung all through the time they worked together, has, overnight, discovered his many virtues following the latter’s abrupt (and surprising) resignation as Lieutenant-Governor. Could it be a case of better the known devil than the unknown angel?

Not just Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), but everyone will be waiting to see who the central government picks to take Jung’s place. That choice will determine how the relationship between the two governments progresses.

The relationship will never be tension-free for two reasons. One is structural – the complicated administrative arrangement for governing Delhi, which has multiple tension points built into it. The other is individual and party-specific – Kejriwal and AAP revel in confrontations. There have been Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress governments in Delhi when non-BJP and non-Congress governments ruled at the centre. There were conflicts, but never so bitter as has been the case with the AAP government.

It is a no-brainer that Kejriwal and AAP will not find anyone whom they do not appoint acceptable; even someone with the most impeccable of credentials will be called a stooge of the central government. But the Narendra Modi government should still make its selection carefully. It should resist the temptation (and pressure) to appoint a party/sangh parivar functionary who needs to be accommodated, or someone who will be seen as being brought in to teach AAP a lesson.

Jung’s replacement should be someone who has, apart from administrative acumen, oodles of tact. The best way to deal with a difficult child is to humour it on some issues and wait out its crabbiness on other issues till it tires of throwing tantrums. The problem with Jung was that he was seen to be blocking the AAP government on practically every issue.

(Chew on this, most of the bitter clashes between the Kejriwal government and the Narendra Modi government had to do with actions of two United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government appointees – Jung and former police commissioner B S Bassi. The mere fact that they were seen as `taking on’ Kejriwal and AAP has earned both of them a fan following among BJP-Modi sympathisers as well as AAP haters. But that should not blind us to the fact that on several occasions they appeared to needlessly provoking the AAP government and giving it scope to play victim.)

Of course, the new appointee will need to be a trusted person; no government appoints someone who it does not trust. If a party favourite/ideological fellow traveller does not fit the bill, there will be any number of retired bureaucrats who will. The central government’s brief to the new appointee should be to defuse, not ratchet up, tensions and adroitly manage confrontationist situations.

Indeed, both the BJP and central government on one side and AAP and Delhi government on the other should wind down their shrill hostilities.

The BJP should remember that its own state governments had clashed with central governments on the very issues that the AAP government is raising now. In this article, senior lawyer Rajeev Dhavan, has pointed out that in the mid-1990s, the Madan Lal Khurana BJP government in Delhi had clashed with the Congress-ruled central government over routing of files through the Lieutenant-Governor and giving the latter powers over transfers of officers. The Home Ministry then issued a standing order that has come to the rescue of the current central government vis-à-vis the Kejriwal government. (I have confirmed this with a senior Delhi government bureaucrat of that time.)

Let us also not forget that both BJP chief ministers and Congress chief ministers, notably Sheila Dixit, had cribbed about the lack of powers with the state government. They did this even when their own parties were in power at the centre. Indeed, the Supreme Court has also observed that an elected state government should have some powers it can exercise on its own. The court was hearing an appeal filed by the Delhi government against a Delhi High Court order which upheld the primacy of the Lieutenant-Governor in the administrative system governing Delhi.

For its part, AAP should refrain from complaining about harassment all the time. AAP and Kejriwal knew they were getting into an administrative framework that was overwhelmingly skewed towards the central government when they decided to fight the assembly elections even in 2013. There is a fair amount a state government can do with the little elbow room it has; earlier chief ministers have managed, even with a different party ruling in the centre.

As it forays into other states AAP keeps boasting about its achievements in Delhi, notably school education and health reforms. If the central government was not allowing it to do anything at all, as it alleges, how can it claim these successes?

There is no denying that the diarchy kind of system that Delhi – a Union Territory with a legislature – has got is extremely complex. There are at least four authorities – the elected government, the Lieutenant-Governor (who is the agent of the central government and looks after law and order and land issues), the municipal corporations which are under the Union Home Ministry, the Delhi Cantonment Board which reports to the Union Defence Ministry and the New Delhi Municipal Council, which is governed by a board on which the chief minister is just a member (the chairperson is appointed by the central government).

There are several issues on which clarity is needed. Fights between the centre and Delhi government over files and officials are unseemly but can be settled only by a review of existing statutory provisions. But such a review and possible changes cannot take place in a hostile and adversarial atmosphere.

The Supreme Court’s final hearing on the administrative tussle between the two levels of government is on 18 January. When the top court does give its verdict, the two sides should respect it. Recall that after the Delhi High Court verdict that the Lieutenant-Governor was supreme, AAP MLAs were openly churlish, telling people coming to them with problems to go to the LG or the court for redress. That will not do.

Delhi and Delhi-ites deserve a better and less complicated administrative system. All parties with a stake in Delhi need to act in a mature fashion and find a solution to this. Or is that expecting too much?