00:00There is a huge tussle going on at the moment between India's opposition-ruled states
00:09and governors who are appointed by the central government. Four opposition-ruled states – Tamil
00:14Nadu, Punjab, Kerala and Telangana – have gone to India's Supreme Court, essentially saying that
00:20governors in their states have been sitting on a number of bills that the state assemblies have
00:24passed, which means that they cannot become law, and that means that governance has been affected.
00:30Now, the Supreme Court has made some pretty strong observations while hearing this matter,
00:34coming down hard on governors for being partisan. So much so, that literally within a day or so of
00:40their last hearing, the Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi, who's been at loggerheads with the DMK
00:45government there, suddenly returned a number of bills, ten of them, that had been sitting with
00:50him for nearly three years now. In fact, the court made note of that and asked what he had
00:55been doing for three years and questioned whether he did it because of what the Supreme Court said
01:00and how it intervened. But it all really boils down to the office of the governor. Do we still
01:06need this colonial era post in today's 21st century democratic India? What is the purpose
01:12that governors are actually serving? It was meant to be a non-partisan constitutional position,
01:18but ever since the post was created for decades now, it has been misused by the central government
01:24to basically act against opposing governments at the state level. So whether it was under the
01:29Congress rule and now under the BJP rule, governors have by and large been partisan and they've been
01:35agents of the centre. They've not only sat on bills, but have often through their actions
01:40helped in the downfall of governments. So why do we need them? Who's going to miss them if they go?
01:46It's a longstanding debate in India, but one that needs to be revisited and
01:50seriously discussed. Is it time to do away with this post?
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