Mahajan has generated political controversies before -- whether with Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu or with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, whether for what he said or did not say. His statement on Bihar, however, is likely to cause little political controversy for his argument for a reprieve for the Rabri regime. It is not as if others have not been guided by similarly celestial considerations in their pursuit of power. Nor as if horoscopes have played an important role only in thepolitics of Hindutva. Laloo's own resort to the occult as a means to a political return has not exactly been a closely guarded secret. The Congress crusaders against the BJP's ideological backwardness were no better in this regard when they ruled. The primacy of the auspicious over the administrative was, in fact, the result of a process they pioneered. The former rulers were also the first to create India's own Rasputins, the long line of gurus of extra-governmental eminence from Dhirendra Brahmachari to Chandraswami. Not much less susceptible to the temptations of the star trek have been the more avowedly rational sections of the political spectrum, ranging from individual Left leaders to Dravidian Jayalalitha with her numerological preference for nine.

No, Article 356 has no provision for `auspicious' dates for the dismissal of a state government under which governance in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution has become impossible. The Constitution, however, does provide for promotion of ascientific temper as a directive principle of state policy. Such an objective, surely, cannot be achieved by any mantra -- including Mahajan's, for an extra-constitutional, even extra-terrestrial condition for a step to save law and order in a state of India!