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PROVINCIAL EXECUTIVE 323
of the Government. Yet as rule 36(1) of the Devolution Rules laid down that the Finance Department should be controlled by a member of the Executive Council, that department was virtually converted into a Reserved Department. Having been placed into the hands of the Executive Councillor, not responsible to the legislature, it is only natural that the department should be on the Reserved side and the head of the department more or less identified with the work of the reserved departments to the disadvantage of the Ministers. The position assigned to the Governor in relation to the Transferred subjects was another factor which worked to the detriment of the transferred side of the Government. Under section 52( 3 ) it was laid down that in relation to the transferred subjects the Governor shall be guided by the advice of his ministers, unless he sees sufficient reason to dissent from their opinion. But the common complaint has been that the Governors instead of reducing their interference to exceptional occasions of fundamental difference claimed that in law the ministers were merely their advisers and they were free to reject their advice if they thought fit to do so. This perverse interpretation made the position of the ministers worse than the position of the Executive Councillors. For, the Executive Councillors could not be overruled in ordinary cases except by a majority of votes. While under the interpretation put by the Governors upon section 52( 3 ) Ministers were at the mercy of the Governor and were without the protection enjoyed by the Executive Councillors. There was another thing which also helped the aggrandizement of the powers of the Governors as against the ministers and which tended to cripple the activity of the latter. The Instrument of Instructions issued to the Governor charged him to safeguard the interests of all members of the services employed in the Presidency in the legitimate exercise of their function and in the enjoyment of all their recognised rights and privileges. The duty was confined only to the question of the safeguarding of the interests of the services. But the Governors placed a wider interpretation on this instruction and insisted that all matters relating to the services including the question of their appointments, posting and promotions in the Minister’s department should be under the charge of the Governors. In Bombay the Governor claimed this right even with regard to the services functioning under the Executive Councillors and to make it known that the Governor has this power; the ordinary form “the Governor in Council is pleased to appoint” was changed to “Governor is pleased to appoint”. The position assigned to the Secretary of a Ministerial Department also helped to weaken the authority of the minister and to increase the autocracy of the Governor. For, in all cases, where the Secretary differed from the decision of the ministers, he was permitted to approach the Governor over the head of his political chief and get his decision altered by the fiat of the Governor.
- All this undoubtedly had an adverse effect on the satisfactory working of dyarchy. But what I wish to guard against is the inference often drawn that in the absence of these factors dyarchy could have been