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Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda resigned after being asked to prove his majority in the assembly. He resigned after being advised by the BJP leadership to quit if he didnt have the numbers to prove his majority in a floor test. Governor Syed Sibtey Razi, has asked him to continue until alternative arrangements were made, meanwhile Speaker Inder Singh Namdhari also tendered his resignation. This follows yesterday's resignation of four ministers Enos Ekka, Harinarayan Rai and Madhu Koda (all independents) and Kamlesh Singh (NCP) and their withdrawal of support to the BJP-JD (U) coalition. The NDA coalition had the support of 42 MLAs in the 82-member assembly. But with the resignation of the four ministers, it has been reduced to a minority. The JMM's Shibu Soren was not very happy at the way things have shaped up with the Congress making promises to the breakaway group of MLAs. Babulal Marandi who walked out of the BJP earlier in the year had taken the moral high ground calling for fresh elections. Echoing his sentiments, the Left parties too had called for fresh elections. Meanwhile from neighbouring Bihar, it was RJD President Lalu Yadav who queered the pitch for the Munda Government by rallying the dissident MLAs and providing the Congress with a conscience cover of not having directly toppled Munda.

The 4 MLAs now want want big portfolios in any future administration. Koda wants the Chief Minister's chair before making any deal with the Congress.

So is the tail wagging the dog in Jharkhand ?

Offstumped looked at the 2005 assembly election results in Jharkhand to get a first hand feel for the underlying political fragmentation which is at the root of this instability in this toddler state.

The Jharkhand assembly has 81 seats. A whopping 9 national parties, 8 state parties, 42 registered but unrecognized parties contested the 2005 elections. This statistic itself throws into question the effectiveness of the Party System in states like Jharkhand. It also throws a larger question on the effectiveness of the Constitutional Design envisaged by the founding fathers who viewed the Legislature or parliament as supreme and the Council of Ministers to be elected from within the Legislature. We will get to this in a while.

A total of 1390 aspiring MLAs contested the election with 74 seats having more than 10 contestants per seat. While the least number of contestants in a constituency were 8, Bokaro had a whopping 53 contestants.

The voting percentages say it all on how fragmented the polity in the state was. The BJP had a vote share of 30% in the seats it contested winning 30 seats while the Congress had a vote share of 23% in the seats it contested winning only 9. The rest had single digit vote shares. The JMM had a vote share of 24% winning 17 seats while the JDU won 6 seats with a vote share of 18% and Laloo Yadav's RJD had a 7 seats with a vote share of 13%.

Coming to the group of 4 MLAs who have brought about this crisis.

Ennos Ekka who contested Kolebira had 13 challengers and won with a margin of 4% which was 4000 votes, polling only 30% of the votes.

Harinarayan Ray who contested Jarmundi had 25 challengers and won with a margin of 6% with 6000 votes, polling only 25% of the votes.

Madhu Koda who wants to be Chief Minister contested Jaganathpur against 11 challengers and won with a sizeable margin of 20% but only had 36% of the votes polled in his favor.

So the crisis in Jharkhand pretty much is a case of the Tail wagging the Dog.

As Madhu Koda starts the bargaining with Laloo Yadav and Sonia Gandhi's UPA the problems of Executive Instability will remain. Especially given how lop-sided the arrangement is with independent MLAs with a mercenary attitude will be running the show for the Congress and Lalu Yadav who while keeping their conscience clear will have zero accountability. Fresh elections maybe a conscience redeemer for Sonia Gandhi and whet Babulal Marandi's appettite but will they really solve the problem ?

The reality in Jharkhand is a fragmented polity and a failing Party system. This reality is challenging the underlying assumptions of our Constitution's design and the founding father's intent. All of this goes back to the cardinal principle of holding the Legislature supreme and limiting the Chief Executive, the President or the Governor, as acting on the advise of the Council of Ministers who in turn had to be elected by the Legislature. This cardinal principle works fine in a two party system like Great Britain but is severely challenged in the diverse democracy that we are. Interestingly a reading of the Constituent Assembly debates reveals that the original intent of the founding father's was to have the Governor elected directly by the people in the States. This subsequently was however discarded. Frequently the question of adopting a presidential form of government props up in public debate. The Vajpayee NDA Governments National Commission for Review of the Constitution was expected to blaze some trail on this topic but it too shied away from venturing into that zone. The reasons are quite obvious.

The entire Constitution in its present form was tailored for a Parliamentary democracy. A mere ammendment would not address the problem. A move to Presidential form of Democracy would require a complete overhaul of the Constitution and the Supreme Court has ruled that the basic structure of the constitution cannot be tampered with. So the Constitutional Design Limitations will continue to preserve Legislative Instability unless the people gravitate overwhelmingly towards a two party system or a two coalition system.

The chances of this are remote under the current political circumstances given how political affiliations change with the wind. There maybe a case to look at fixed term for the Legislatures and have only the Chief Minister or Prime Minister be elected by the House and leave it to the CM or PM to select his cabinet by advising the Governor or President from outside the legislature. This way frequent elections are avoided while removing incentives for dissident and opportunistic Legislators to trade power for loyalties. The 15-member Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) has been set up to examine the constitutional and legal positions relating to Office of Profit and suggest a comprehensive definition.  Lead by Congress MP from Karnataka Iqbal Ahmed Saradgi the panel should go beyond merely defining what is an Office of Profit to look at the root causes of how Offices of Profit have become the source of Legislative Instability.

Offstumped Bottomline: In the absence of a move to completely redesign the constitution at least the strong nexus that exists between between Executive Power and Legislative Loyalty should be eliminated through the Office of Profit Definition.  It must go into how Offices of Profit have created a system of incentives and opportunities to trade legislative loyalties for Executive Power. Point to ponder for the BJP and the Congress.