President’s rule in Indian States

President’s rule in India is the imposition of Direct Union Government rule in a state via Governor by Article 356 of the Constitution of India. Meaning, the Union Government can take direct control of the state machinery. Article 356 gives tremendous power to Union Government to assert authority over states to preserve the unity and integrity of the nation, whereas article 356 has been misused to its maximum.

As we can observe from the above graph, the number of terms President rule have been imposed in States are very less after independence till 1965, the count increases from 1966 when Indira Gandhi assumes PM office. During 1977, when the Emergency was in place, it could be observed 10 states became victim to Article 356, despite having the majority. In the next 2 years when Moraji Desai was in power, the count relatively reduced. In 1980, when Indira Gandhi came to power, 9 states despite a proven majority in their respective assembly have been suspended. Post assassination of PM Indira Gandhi, Implementation of Article 356 over states with the majority was not a norm. Again in 1990 during the tenure of Chandra Shekhar, the count starts going high again, same continued with PV Narasimha Rao till 1993.

To date, the State government have been suspended 132 times out of which 50 terms, the State assemblies were having the majority.

On 11th March 1994, The Supreme Court of India provided a landmark judgement on SR Bommai Vs The Union of India, which provided guidelines for the dissolution of Legislative assemblies using Article 356. Before the judgement, almost 50% of the times, Article 356 have been missused.

Post Judgement, out of 30 occurrences, only 3 terms the article have been implemented with the majority in place. Even those three instances are valid as there was the division of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The other two was due to the revocation of special status to Jammu and Kashmir which was granted under Article 370. When Jammu and Kashmir were converted to Union Territory, President’s rule was imposed despite having the majority, but not with Article 356, it was imposed under Section 73 of Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019. (It has to be noted that Article 356 does not apply to union territories)

Manipur suffered the most with the highest terms (10) the state assembly was dissolved, followed by Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and J&K (State).