President's Rule In Bengal?

356 Has Been Imposed For Less

Dear Reader,

What (or rather, how much) is enough justification for imposing the President's rule in a state? In the yester times of Congress rule, as little as irking a member of the Gandhi family was enough to invite the wrath of the Centre under Article 356.

But things changed for the better in 1994 after the Supreme Court restrained the brazen misuse of Article 356 in the S.R. Bommai v. Union of India case.

Now there are calls for imposing President's rule in West Bengal following the horrific rape in RG Kar Medical College. The situation is grave. Especially because of the apparent attempts at coverup — be it the mob attack on the protestors, attempts at vandalising the crime scene, or harassment of common citizens at the hands of police.

Even the Calcutta High Court slammed the West Bengal government calling the situation an "absolute failure of State Machinery".

The worrying situation in Bengal and whether imposing Article 356 would be good in law is the focus of our Weekend Magazine this week.

My colleague Kumar Abhishek argues that it is the "gravity of the incident that should matter in deciding if the imposition of the President's rule is justifiable, not the number of incidents."

Why so?

Read about it all and more in our weekend edition.

Also worth reading is R Jagannathan's article where he explains why "Hindenburg's charges against SEBI are mostly 'Nonsense', and a pre-emptive strike to prevent action."

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Until next week,

Anmol N Jain