NEW DELHI: Former Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director M.K.Narayanan is tapped to be appointed Governor of Kamataka as part of is shuffle of Governors that is expected to take place shortly.
An IPS officer from the Tamil Nadu cadre Narayanan will replace Governor Khursheed Alam Khanandis resolving the Cauvery dispute between Kamataka and Tamil Nadu.
Apart from this the Center is likely to accede to the demand made by its party MPs in Parliament during the recent past and drop Nagaland Governor M.M.Thomas during the expected reshuffle. A change is also likely in Manipur where Governor Chintamani Panigrahi came under severe criticism for what the Central government felt was undue delay in recommending Presidents rule earlier this year.
Narayanan who retired and handed overcharge to V.G.Vadya on Tuesday is not the first former IB Director to be made Governor. The late Rajiv Gandhi had appointed T.V. Rajeshwar as Governor Arunachal Pradesh and later of West Bengal. While the choice of Narayanan for the Raj Bhavan in Bangalore is ostensibly for his qualities as an administrator insiders point out that he has been the most politically active intelligence chief since Independence and thus the appointment is a reward for his “hard work.”
Although Narayanan originally hails from Kerala the fact that he served in the Tamil Nadu cadre may have a bearing on how he might try to resolve the Cauvery dispute. As it stands the Justice Mukherjee tribunal which gave its interim award last summer said that for the time being Karnataka should release 205 TMC of the river waters over the calendar year for Tamil Nadus use.
Karnataka refused to implement the interim award. The tribunal met once again when Karnataka filed a petition in January questioning the interim award and asking it be changed.
The chief ministers of the two states and Kornla_ and Bandishamry have also met since then but the matter has not yet been resolved. It now rests with the Prime Minister who apparently thinks that sending Narayanan as Governor may help solve the conundrum. As for Governor Thomas he has come under criticism both in the Government as well as Parliament for his dissolution of the Nagaland assembly last Friday.
He was accused of dissolving the Assembly on “narrow and partisan” grounds without informing the Center as is normally the practice While he acted on the advice of Chief Minister Vamuzo this caused an uproar as Vamuzo was set to lose his majority in the legislature following an expected Supreme Court opening of the disqualification of 15 MLAs (the ruling never came since the Assembly was dissolved).
By dissolving the Assembly Thomas had effectively scuttled the good chances the Congress legislators had of forming a Government in the state. He is likely to pay the price for this very soon. As for Governor Panigrahi the criticism against him is that he deliberately delayed imposing Presidents rule in Manipur on February 7 allegedly to allow former chief minister R.K.Ranbir Singh time to manipulate and muster support from legislators.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 17, 1992
