The BJP Telangana unit has reacted sharply to an article written by Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao, the Chief Public Relations Officer of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, on appointment of Governors.
VJN Rao had recently written a piece in The Hans India, about the appointment and role of Governors in Indian states. Referring to the report of the Sarkaria Commission, which was appointed in the late 80’s to look into the matter of Governor appointments, VJN Rao said that Governors must be persons of ‘eminence in some field and should be a detached figure with little record of participation in the local politics of the State’. He also listed other recommendations of the report – that a politician from the ruling party at the centre shall not be made the Governor in a state run by another political party and the Chief Minister of the state shall be compulsorily consulted before appointing the Governor of the state.
In his article, VJN Rao also stated that the Governors and the Central government have, in the past, misused the institution to fulfill their political interests. He also stated that the appointment of Governors shall not be a process of political rehabilitation for the party in power at the centre.
More than the content of the article, it is the timing of its publication that seems to have ruffled BJP Telangana’s feathers, since Former State President of BJP Tamil Nadu Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan took charge as the Governor of Telangana on Sunday, the same day as the article’s publication.
Responding to this article, Telangana BJP Chief Spokesperson Krishna Saagar Rao, on Monday, said that the piece targeted Tamilisai Soundararajan, who took her oath as the Governor of Telangana on Sunday, the date when the article was published. “Going by a published column in an English daily newspaper on the same day she was sworn-in, by CM KCR's Chief Public Relations Officer Mr Jwala Narasimha Rao, it's quite evident that the Chief Minister's Office is quite rattled on Governor's appointment for reasons only known to them,” read BJP’s press statement on the controversy.
Adding that writing such a piece was unbecoming of a senior government officer, the BJP stated that through the article, VJN Rao has cast ‘aspersions on the new Governor, and presumes that she will misuse the office’.
“BJP strongly condemns these baseless accusations and presumptive political conspiracy being attributed to a constitutional custodian appointed through due process,” Krishna Saagar Rao said.
Apart from an apology to Tamilisai Soundararajan, BJP demanded that the Chief Minister should condemn the piece and initiate action against the CPRO.
However, VJN Rao told TNM that he had not made any specific reference to any Governor in his article. “As a political analysis, generally I have analysed Governor, Governor role, appointments and all. It is nothing against one single individual,” he said. Adding that there is no motive behind him writing this piece, he said, “I regularly write articles on several contemporary issues. I keep sending articles and they publish it. I never asked them to publish it on that day.”