President should have cautioned government on Uttarakhand: P Chidambaram

TIRUCHIRAPPALLI: Former home minister P Chidambaram has said that the BJP-led government has been roundly snubbed for its “calculated misadventure” in Uttarakhand. He also said there was no compelling urgency to proclaim President’s rule in the state on the eve of the trust vote.

The BJP, undoubtedly, has an agenda to disrupt Congress state governments; just that it gets snubbed by courts from time to time, he said. Explaining the anti-defection law that has been in the statute book for over 25 years, he said: “If a member of a party defies the whip or votes against it, he is automatically disqualified.

The Speaker just goes through the motions and pronounces his disqualification. When the nine MLAs voted against the finance bill they were disqualified.”

Pointing to the fact that the NDA government had sent recommendations for President’s rule at 8:30 pm on a Sunday, when the trust vote was scheduled for next morning, Chidambaram said: “I think the President would have been well advised to caution restraint and tell the finance minister who had come to meet him with the recommendations to ‘please come back tomorrow’, after the trust vote.

Between 8:30 pm on Sunday and 11 am on Monday, there was no compelling urgency to proclaim President’s rule in Uttarakhand,” said the former minister campaigning in his constituency, Sivaganga, for the DMK-Congress alliance.