Editor’s Pick: another congress government topples

(The Editor's Pick is a new newsletter from The Hindu that provides a snapshot of the most important stories from today's edition of our newspaper, along with a note from our top editors on why we chose to give prominence to these stories.)

The Congress-led government in Puducherry fell on Monday after Chief Minister V. Narayanaswamy submitted his resignation to Lieutenant Governor Tamilisai Soundarajan as it became apparent that he had lost the confidence of the House. The Union Territory appears headed for President’s rule as the Opposition parties are not keen on forming a government with the election just two months away.

Mr. Narayanasamy used the floor of the Assembly for one final assault on the BJP government at the Centre, which he said had engineered resignations from the Congress to topple a democratically elected government virtually on the doorstep of elections. Not long ago, the Narayanasamy Ministry had a comfortable majority with 19 members in the 33-member Assembly. One Congress MLA was subsequently disqualified in July last year, and in the last one month, six MLAs from the Congress-DMK combine quit the House. Among them were two Ministers and a couple of MLAs who gave up their seats just a day before the floor test. Two of those who quit the Assembly have since joined the BJP.

Mr. Narayanasamy said the Opposition had to answer to the electorate for being on board with such anti-democratic measures and explain whether they approved of the manner in which the Union government, through former Lt. Governor Kiran Bedi, had for years attacked the Congress government and obstructed the implementation of welfare schemes. The issue will be a rallying theme for the Congress-led Secular Democratic Progressive Alliance during the coming campaign and it could even find resonance in Tamil Nadu.

The election in Puducherry may be close but timing is evidently not a concern for the BJP which repeatedly implements a familiar power play. The elected government in Puducherry is the second Congress government, in less than a year, to have been dislodged in an identical manner. In March last year, the Kamal Nath-led government in Madhya Pradesh (M.P.) lost power after 22 MLAs, many of whom were Jyotiraditya Scindia loyalists, resigned from the Assembly. Many of them eventually joined the BJP and have been re-elected in subsequent bypolls. By engineering this latest downfall so close to the polls, however, the saffron party have lost more than it has gained in Puducherry. That will be a crucial question going forward and that marks this story out as our top pick of the day.

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