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The Actions of the Governor and the Legal Challenge

26. The heart of the dispute in the present case is whether the Governor was acting within the bounds of his constitutional authority in ordering a trust vote to be conducted on the floor of the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly on 16 March 2020. The factual background to this question has been adverted to in the prefatory part of the judgment. To recapitulate, twenty-two Members belonging to the INC tendered their resignations on 10 March 2020. Alleging the complicity of the BJP in engineering these resignations, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh in his letter to the Governor dated 13 March 2020 stated that ‗as a responsible leader‘ he would ‗invite and would welcome a floor test‘ of his government in the forthcoming Budget Session of the Legislative Assembly notified to commence on 16 March 2020. This, according to the Chief Minister, was ‗the minimum a constitutional authority could offer to address the ongoing turmoil‘. The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly furnished an opportunity on 13 March 2020 and 14 March 2020 to all the twenty-two Members (including six Cabinet Ministers among them) to appear before him but they did not do so. On 13 March 2020, notices of disqualification were issued to the six Members who were members of the Cabinet. The Governor acting on the aid and advice of the Chief Minister dismissed these six individuals from the State Cabinet. On 14 March 2020, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly acting pursuant to Rule 276 of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Rules, accepted their resignations. In a communication dated 14 March 2020 the Governor called upon the Chief Minister to undertake a floor test to determine whether the latter‘s to determine whether the government commanded the confidence of the legislature. The communication stated that the floor test was to take place at the inception of the forthcoming Budget Session immediately after the address of the Governor.