Over five years ago, when Arif Mohammad Khan was appointed Governor of Kerala, he did one thing before going to the state. He called a friend of mine to the Kerala House in New Delhi—where writer Khushwant Singh was born and which was later bought by the Maharaja of Kochi—for a crash course in Malayalam, considered one of the most difficult languages to learn.

In fact, as the story goes, Akbar the Great once asked his wisest adviser, Birbal, to travel all over India and learn all the important languages within a year. After a year, Birbal was summoned to the palace to demonstrate whether he had mastered those languages. One by one, he spoke all the languages to the satisfaction of the scholars present.

When it came to Malayalam, Birbal asked Akbar to give him half an hour's rest. The ruler thought he wanted to go to the loo. After half an hour, Birbal returned to the court. He was asked to start speaking in Malayalam. Instead of speaking, he began shaking a small brass vessel he had brought, which contained some pebbles.

Annoyed, Akbar asked him what he was doing. Birbal said the cacophony he created was Malayalam. In other words, he was telling His Majesty that learning the language was beyond him. Akbar appreciated Birbal's sense of humour, and the matter ended there.

Arif Mohammed Khan probably heard this story when he invited Prof Chandrasekharan Nair of Indira Gandhi National Open University to give him a crash course in Malayalam.

When I heard about this incident, I was happy that the Governor-designate had taken his job seriously. Alas, he turned out to be the worst Governor Kerala has had—picking quarrels with the elected government even on petty issues. At one point, he gave the impression that two parallel centres of power existed in Kerala—one in the State Secretariat, where Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan sat, and the other in Raj Bhavan, where Khan resided.

The Governor appeared to have been sent to Kerala with the express purpose of needling the democratically elected government. Yet, he expected to have his creature comforts taken care of by the government even when he remained absent from the state to spend time with his family in Uttar Pradesh. He wanted a new Mercedes so that he could travel in style, all the while claiming he faced a threat to his life.

His predecessor, P Sathasivam, was also the Centre's nominee. He earned notoriety when he justified the killing of the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his teenage sons, Philip and Timothy, in a verdict while he was the Chief Justice of India. When a hue and cry erupted over the verdict, he took the extraordinary step of deleting those contentious paragraphs from the judgement, though it was presumed that once a judgement was pronounced, it could not be edited by the same judge.

He got the job for services rendered to some powerful persons from Gujarat. But as Governor, he did not create any problems for the government.

True, it is not the first time that the Central Government has appointed its favourites as governors. Because of my Patna connections, Kerala's then Governor Ram Dulari Sinha once invited me to the Raj Bhavan for a tête-à-tête over a cup of coffee. While I was with The Tribune at Chandigarh, I was also friendly with another former Kerala Governor, Justice Sukhdev Singh Kang.

He told me what impressed him the most was that in every town in Kerala, the biggest building was that of a college or a school, and it showed the importance people attached to education. He did not see his role as Governor as that of a confrontationist.

It was at the Raj Bhavan in Shillong that I had the longest conversation with a serving governor. He was MM Jacob, a veteran Congress leader who was enjoying his second term as Governor.

I asked him how the BJP government had appointed him Governor. He told me that he himself was surprised when, one day, Home Minister LK Advani asked him whether he would like to go to Shillong as Governor. And when the five-year term ended, Advani asked him again whether he would like to continue. I asked him why Advani considered a dyed-in-the-wool Congressman for the post.

"We sat on adjacent seats in the Rajya Sabha. Advani, perhaps, liked me and my conduct." Mr Jacob had no other explanation.

The point is that the practice of using governors against the elected government is of recent origin—in fact, since Narendra Modi came to power at the Centre with Amit Shah in the Home Ministry.

Under the Constitution, anyone who is a citizen of India, above the age of 35, and who does not hold an office of profit can be appointed a Governor. He can even be an illiterate, a nonagenarian, or a centenarian. There is no requirement that he or she should know the workings of the Constitution.

In Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal had a brute majority in the Assembly. But the greatest opposition he faced was from the Lieutenant-Governor, who began lording it over him. The AAP government was not able to fulfil its promises to the people because the LG knew how to scuttle its plans by misusing his influence on the IAS officers, who knew he was nothing but a tool in the hands of the Home Ministry. The LG even had the cheek to certify Atishi Singh as a better CM than her predecessor, only to create a rift between them.

Delhi is not a full-fledged state, unlike Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and yet, governors have been at loggerheads with their chief ministers. The Constitution is silent on many things—like, for instance, how long a governor can sit on a piece of legislation approved by the state legislature. For any Bill passed by the State Assembly, it is mandatory to have the approval of the Governor before it becomes an Act. But there is no stipulation on how long the Governor can keep a Bill pending.

The Governor can express his opinion about a Bill and even return it to the government. But if the Assembly passes it again, he is bound to give his assent. Arif Mohammed Khan would sit on the Bills for years and then claim that they were referred to the President for approval. This forced the government to approach the Supreme Court, where the case is still pending. In the meantime, another Governor, RN Ravi, was behaving worse than Khan in Tamil Nadu.

He sat on as many as 10 Bills passed by the state legislature. One of them pertained to the appointment of vice-chancellors. As Chancellor of all universities, the Governor would appoint the members of the search committee and, finally, appoint the one he chooses. This is anti-democratic and goes against the practice in other states like Gujarat, where it is the government of the day that selects the vice-chancellors.

When Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin decided to challenge the Governor in the Supreme Court, Ravi tried to save his skin by referring the Bills to the President. On her part, President Droupadi Murmu did not behave in a proper manner. She is not only the custodian of the Constitution but also the boss to whom all the Governors report. She could have reprimanded the Governors who preferred to be lackeys of the Central government.

She could have instructed the governors to expeditiously clear the bills passed by the legislature, and in case they were passed again, they had to give their assent without fail. Alas, in the case of Ravi, she not only acquiesced in his decisions but approved only one Bill out of the 10 sent to her for her approval. In doing so, she was equally guilty of the delaying tactics that the police officer-turned-Governor resorted to.

Thank goodness Stalin decided to challenge the Governor's egregious behaviour! The court decreed: "The action of the Governor to reserve the 10 Bills for the President is illegal and arbitrary. Thus, the action is set aside. All actions taken by the Governor thereto for the 10 Bills are set aside. These Bills shall be deemed to be cleared from the date they were re-presented to the Governor," the bench of Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice R Mahadevan said. The court stated that Governor Ravi did not act in "good faith."

Under ordinary circumstances, Ravi should have resigned. The question is: why should he be singled out? The President herself was guilty. She should have advised the Governor to give his assent to all the Bills passed again by the state legislature. If he had resigned, it would have put pressure on Arif Mohammed Khan, who has a political mission in Bihar.

In the last Assembly election, the BJP-JDU alliance was able to come to power only because of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen of Asaduddin Owaisi splitting Muslim votes in the Muslim-dominated areas. After his departure from Kerala, Arif Mohammed Khan has not said a word against the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar. All the Bills he sat on will also come within the purview of the Supreme Court's order.

One can easily notice one thing: Governors in Opposition-ruled states think that it is their duty to keep the government on tenterhooks. Look at how the West Bengal Governor has been behaving. In his case, leaving the gubernatorial post can land him in trouble, as it is his office that protects him from a case which calls into question his moral and ethical competence to hold such an exalted office.

The verdict is also a setback for Modi and Shah, as they have been using the governors to needle opposition-ruled states. It is foolish to expect them to resign, let alone atone for what their Governors—who are more loyal than the King—did. Under the division of powers, it is the legislature's job to draft laws necessary to govern the country. The Central government should have taken steps to ensure that Bills are passed in a time-bound manner.

Since the Modi government did not do anything of that sort, the Supreme Court had to give clear instructions. For instance, the court prescribed timelines to exercise various options before the Governor and said missing these timelines would invite judicial scrutiny of the Governor's action.

The court has earmarked a one-month deadline for Governors to withhold assent to a Bill and reserve it for the President's review with the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers. When a Bill is reserved without the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers, this deadline will be three months. If a Bill is presented to a Governor after reconsideration by the state Assembly, he or she must clear it within a month. Any exercise of the Governor's powers under Article 200, the court said, is amenable to judicial review.

The court clarified that it is "in no way undermining the Governor's powers." However, all actions of the Governor must align with the principle of parliamentary democracy.

There are deceptive slogans like One Nation, One Law, One Language, One Food, One Election, One Leader, One Party, One Religion, etc. They are all against the democratic, secular, republican credentials of the Indian state, which is more federal than unitary. One can only hope that the Governors understand their limits of power and act within those constraints.

How can Narendra Modi say that he has the mandate of the people when he contradicts this principle when it comes to Opposition-ruled states? Let the Constitution, not Murmu or Modi, prevail!