In Maharashtra, Bhagat Singh Koshyari wants Raj Bhavan independent

In a letter to the Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Koshyari has said Raj Bhavan be made an independent establishment on the lines of the judiciary and the legislative secretariat.

In an escalating stand-off between the Maharashtra government and Raj Bhavan, Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari has sought the delinking of the administration of Raj Bhavan from the state’s General Administration Department (GAD) under Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.

In a letter to the Chief Minister, Koshyari has said Raj Bhavan be made an independent establishment on the lines of the judiciary and the legislative secretariat. Simply put, Koshyari’s office has sought transfer of powers to decide on appointments, transfers and other service-related matters of the staff deployed at Raj Bhavan.

These matters are currently handled by a desk in the GAD. Senior government sources said the Shiv Sena-led coalition government will not give in to the Governor’s demand. A senior source said the Governor’s proposal was not in keeping with the prevalent recruitment rules.

“The senior staff at Raj Bhavan is meant to serve as a bridge between the state administration and the Governor. There will be problems in coordination between the two sides if the Governor’s office demands specific officers, especially from cadres of the other states.”

Sources confirmed that the government has not responded to Koshyari’s letter to the Chief Minister written in March. “The established procedure is that when there is a staff requirement for the governor’s office, he is sent a list of eligible candidates from whom he can choose. The government does not thrust particular officers on the Raj Bhavan.”

Sources in Raj Bhavan said administrative delays encountered by the Governor’s staff in routine service matters prompted such a move. “Raj Bhavan employs over 200 people. Besides senior officials from the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service and the Indian Statistical Organisation, several junior level employees are also a part of its establishment. But even for a routine pay scale matter, the file has to travel to the GAD, which often takes a while to approve it. Raj Bhavans in some others states are independent establishments,” said one Raj Bhavan source.

This is not the first time Raj Bhavan under Koshyari and the Thackeray-led government are sparring. Tension between the two sides have also been brewing over the extension to the statutory development boards, established for the alleviation of development backlog in Vidharbha, Marathwada, and other backward regions of the state.

While the term of the boards set up by the previous BJP-Sena government expired on April 30, the Thackeray cabinet has still not taken steps to appoint new members or grant extension to the existing board. The Governor has the right to issue directives for fund allocation to the boards for specific interventions to correct the regional imbalance.

Senior government officials confirmed that the Governor’s office has expressed displeasure over the delay regarding the formation of the boards. Earlier this month, Opposition Leader (Legislative Assembly) and former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis lashed out at the government for delaying the appointment of the boards, alleging that the ruling coalition was deliberately weakening the constitutional protection provided for balanced development of Vidarbha and Marathwada regions.

In 2001, the Governor’s office had invoked its powers to allocate a fixed percentage of development funds to these boards. The Opposition has been alleging that the ruling coalition wants to scrap the boards to do away with the obligation of funding measures for the removal of regional imbalance.

Earlier the Governor’s office had expressed inability to nominate Uddhav Thackeray to the Legislative Council on one of the two vacant seats nominated under the Governor’s quota citing legal and technical complications. Thackeray, who needed to become a member of one of the houses of the legislature before May 26 to retain his Chief Ministership, had to eventually reach out to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after which the Election Commission announced elections for nine other Maharashtra Legislative Council seats. Thackeray was elected unopposed to one of these.

While the CM has so far maintained silence over the simmering tensions with the Governor’s office, Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar had earlier objected to the “interference of the Governor in administrative activities” after Koshyari began summoning the Chief Secretary and other senior state officials to review the Covid-19 control measures of the government.

On May 20, the last such meeting, while the initial message said that the CM and Deputy CM would be participating via video conference, eventually only the Chief Secretary and some other bureaucrats attended it.

While both the leaders skipped the meeting, Thackeray’s aide Milind Narvekar was present. Koshyari’s role in the overnight swearing in of the short-lived Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar government in November last year had initially led to frayed nerves of the leaders of the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress, who were then finalising a coalition for government formation.

On Saturday, the Governor’s Office took strong objection to a letter written by Higher and Technical Education Minister Uday Samant to the University Grants Commission (UGC) asking for cancellation of final year examination of students of universities in Maharashtra. In a letter to the CM, the Governor asked him to issue suitable instructions to the minister for his ‘unwarranted intervention.’ Koshyari, who is also the Chancellor of Universities, contended that “not conducting the final year examinations by the Universities amounted to breach of the UGC guidelines” and asked the CM to resolve the issue without delay.