Article 356: A Constitutional pain

Article 356: A Constitutional pain

Author Name : Dr. Ravishankar Mor

Though Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar defended inclusion of Emergency Provisions in the Constitution including provisions for imposition of President’s Rule by saying “every part of the Constitution could be abused for political purposes” but he might have never though that the said provision would be used over 125 times in short span of 65 years, rather he said Article 356 would be a “dead later” . This misuse is assigned more to the bad governments that a bad provision in the constitution. Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the then used the provisions of Article 356 to whopping 50 times to dismiss the governments in the states ruled by opposition parties. Next in the list of is Mr. Morarji Desai who used the same provision for the same political cause for 15 times and again Mr. Manmohan Singh and Mr. Narsimharao invoke the provisions for 12 and 11 times respectively. These figures are not certainly encouraging and with the electing of a full majority government after two decades of fractured mandate at the center once again talks of use of Article 356 to tame the states ruled by the opposition parties are making rounds.