What's Up, Guv?

Federal relations, rather than being cooperative, have turned conflictual, and since the last decade or so, become mutually manipulating

- Tanvir Aeijaz

COME elections in the states and we see the incumbent Union government becoming super-active. The recent reshuffle, or rather reset, of both the governors and key administrative officials of the election-bound states indicate an interventionist Union impacting in the state's electoral politics. It also smacks of the instrumentality of the Union-executives' overreach into the electorally significant state's governance, essentially to maintain a vigil or perhaps to elicit feedback during political mobilisations in the state elections.

Early this month, Rashtrapati Bhavan made an announcement of major gubernatorial-reshuffle involving many states and union territories, including Ladakh, Delhi, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Maharashtra, Telangana, Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland. Prima facie it appears to be a routine reshuffle, even though quite sudden, bereft of any reasonable explanations. It would be quite interesting to take note of governors' political interventions, particularly in the poll-bound states of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu and their efforts to keep federal democracy working within the states. With four states—West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam—and one union territory— Puducherry—going for elections next month, the stage is set for high stakes contests having deep ramifications for national politics.

The architecture of Indian federal democracy is