India Today: Mumbai:
Saturday, 18 July 2020.
To find
out exactly what transpired, India Today filed a Right to Information petition
with the home ministry on November 23, 2019.
It was a
Saturday when at 8 am, on November 23, 2019, in a dramatic twist to political
events in Maharashtra, Bharatiya Janata Party's Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in
as the chief minister with Nationalist Congress Party's Ajit Pawar as his
deputy by Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari.
It sent
ripples across the country as it perplexed everyone how overnight the situation
could change so drastically.
Three
days later, Devendra Fadnavis quit as the Maharashtra chief minister, hours
after the Supreme Court ordered a floor test.
While
his government did not survive, no one knew how exactly he happened to stake
his claim in the first place.
The
intervening night of November 22 and 23, 2019, is a night of mystery like no
other because in those few hours, a political coup was executed which involved
not just the Maharashtra governor but the Union Cabinet in Delhi as well as the
President of India as without the compliance of these three constitutionally
approved entities, Devendra Fadnavis could not have taken the oath to become
the Maharashtra chief minister.
There
were three major elements to why the sudden change in events was so surprising.
1. Just
a few hours ago Devendra Fadnavis took the oath, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav
Thackeray had been declared the CM-designate of a Congress-NCP-Sena formation,
which commanded a majority in the newly elected Vidhan Sabha.
2. The
state was under President's rule.
3. It
was a closely guarded ceremony.
According
to norms, when there is a President's rule in place, several steps have to be
taken before a chief minister is again appointed. However, none of these steps
were followed.
Without
giving a timeline, Devendra Fadnavis revealed that his party had staked claim
overnight to form a government, following which, the President's rule was
lifted at 5 a.m.
To find
out exactly what transpired, according to official records lodged with the
government, India Today filed a Right to Information petition with the home
ministry.
India
Today posed a series of questions like:
* Who
staked claim to form the government?
* How
did the Governor of Maharashtra verify Devendra Fadnavis's claim?
* When
did the governor recommend the Centre to lift the President's rule?
* When
was the cabinet convened for the removal of the President's rule?
* At
what time was the decision of the Cabinet conveyed to the President of India?
In its
response about a month later, the home ministry said, "The information
sought is either in the form of query or fiduciary in the nature and can't be
provided under section 2 (f) and Section 8 (1) (e) of the RTI Action 2005"
After
denial of the information from the home ministry, India Today filed an RTI
application with the President's Secretariat in hope to get get some
information on this issue.
Rather
than responding to our questions, the President's Secretariat forwarded our
application to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
This
time, the MHA responded back with the "information sought is of fiduciary
in nature and cannot be provided under section 8 (1) (e) of the RTI Act 2005.
Not
satisfied with the response, India Today filed an appeal.
The
First Appellate Authority of the home ministry has justified not giving
information under section 8 (1) (e) of the RTI Act and said, "there is no
reason to intervene in this matter".
Whatever
might have been the sequence of events of how Devendra Fadnavis convinced the
governor to have the President's rule lifted and him to be sworn in as the
chief minister, a record of it must exist in the books of the government.
India
Today's attempts at digging out the records have failed for now but governments
come and governments go, someday the records will come out.
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