Vajpayee to demand the ouster of Rabri Devi before the election. Campaign trail rhetoric is often purely of entertainment value. But when three senior ministers of the new government demand the dismissal of the Bihar government, the issue assumes alarming proportions. The Ministers for Finance, Defence and the Railways have all called for exercising the option of Article 356. Of them, the first has clarified that he was speaking as the president of the state unit of the BJP. The latter two, however, have seen no call for such delicacy. At the same time, there has been a consistent undercurrent of demands from the AIADMK for Karunanidhi's ouster on patently flimsy grounds.

First, Justice M.C. Jain tarred the whole Tamil race in his interim report. Then, the AIADMK's case got somewindow-dressing by the bomb blasts in Coimbatore and election-related violence. However, if degree of violence is the criterion, then there are many other state governments ripe for the infliction of Article 356. Half the governments in the Northeast, for instance, would have to be dismissed repeatedly.

The government's ministers should go to the appropriate venue for settling political scores: the political arena. Seeking to use the most extreme provision of the Constitution only reveals an immaturity and a degree of irresponsibility that, in an ideal world, would see them debarred from holding high office. Article 356 is reserved only for dealing with states that had gone beyond the point of no return. The criterion for its imposition is a patent breakdown of the state machinery. A legislature has to demonstrate itself to be beyond the pale, by moving directly against the spirit of the Constitution, before the President can have valid reason to order its dissolution. A law and order problem, howeverserious, should not attract the use of Article 356.

That would be warranted only if the state legislature, for instance, were to pass a resolution seceding from the Union. Article 356 should be used only in the very rarest cases because it implies a suspension, however temporary, of the people's right to self-determination. Neither Bihar nor Tamil Nadu is afflicted by any disease that calls for such strong medicine. The former stands accused primarily of financial irregularities; the latter, of being unable to contain terrorist activities.The debate on the appropriate use of Article 356 remained unresolved in the meeting of the Standing Committee of the Inter-State Council which was called by the previous government in an effort to have a consensus on the issue. Thanks to coalition politics, it has become politically expedient for governments at the Centre to profess an abiding sympathy for the interests of the states. As far as Article 356 is concerned, the previous government was not able to make muchheadway. Under Deve Gowda, in fact, it had Romesh Bhandari ruling Uttar Pradesh. But this government, which has openly committed itself to the states, has no business even talking about invoking Article 365.