The relation between the Centre and states in India has been an issue of much contestation, and the Centre often intervened in the affairs of the states, particularly invoking Article 356 of the Constitution. Understandably, there was a simmering resentment against the Centre on this count, and if the ruling party in a state was different from the ruling party at the Centre,  such resentment found strong public expression. It was not rare that one heard charges that the Centre was treating states as municipalities. While the Congress party during its heyday of rule used this provision generously, particularly during the Indira Gandhi regime (1967-1977 & 1980-1984), the Janata Party government (1977-1979), too, came under its sinister spell.
Let us look at the cartography of federal relations in India that has evolved over time. It is a complex, multi-tiered formation, each one of the tiers enjoying varied degrees of power — the Union, states, autonomous regions, tribal district councils, scheduled areas, and panchayat bodies of all kinds. Some of these tiers have evolved after prolonged agitations and deliberations at various levels. Delhi itself saw the transition from being a mere Union territory to Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi in 1991 following the 69th amendment to the Constitution. This development was a consequence of the widespread popular demand in this regard, and all major political parties had concurred on the issue. The retention of control by the Centre over public order, police and land, did not have much public support in Delhi. In fact, one of the tactical ways employed by political parties to edge out their opponents in elections was to challenge their stand with regard to full statehood for Delhi. In this context it is important to bear in mind that Delhi is much different from the states surrounding it — its history, demography, social formation, political traditions, public institutions, languages and modes of life etching a stamp of distinctiveness on it. The fact that the central government is located here is only one facet of its life.
Irrespective of the letter of law, when the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi was claiming a larger arena of power over Delhi administration, he was doing much disservice to the political cartography of Delhi as well as the evolving federal relations in India. He was showing scant respect to Delhi’s aspirations to breathe its own life. He was hanging on to the formal distinction between the Union and states, and claiming that being a Union territory, Delhi could not have all the powers that states enjoy. He was out of step with the evolution of federal relations in India, and was doing
great harm to the spirit behind the Act of 1991, leave alone the popular demand for statehood in Delhi. While several BJP leaders, particularly Arun Jaitley, have embraced this distinction to show the AAP government its place, there seems to be much more cooking in the pot.
BJP, and its earlier avatar Bharatiya Jan Sangh, has always considered ‘integral humanism’, and following from it ‘integral nationalism’ as a foundational principle, drawing its inspiration from Deendayal Upadhyaya. This principle of organic interdependence, however, cannot be harmonised with the way federal relations have flourished in India, with regions evolving a life of their own. There is a strong strand in BJP that is inclined to arrest this process in the name of national unity. In this context, it might be important to point out that the Prime Minister has employed the notion of cooperative federalism to denote his approach to Centre-State relations in India. If you foreground integral nationalism to cooperative federalism it would mean greater initiative from the states, accountability as well as responsibility, but tighter control, and regulatory direction from the Centre. Such an idea of cooperative federalism is far away from the kind of political asmita or identity that states have been seeking in India, and have nurtured  to an extent. The stand-off in Delhi, therefore, is a clash between two ideas of India!
The metaphor employed by Kejriwal of imperial rule, calling the Lieutenant Governor a viceroy, does not capture BJP’s pursuit of integral nationalism. It is not the past that is recasting Kejriwal into insignificance, but the present. The latter demands a very different response. Besides, he does not seem to have adequately realised that political power is not merely a mathematical sum of the number of votes and seats one secures in elections, particularly if one wishes to employ it to further a transformative agenda. By edging out some of his very competent lieutenants, he has undercut his own ability to stand up to adversity. Political legitimacy is built by engendering consent, and the lieutenants that he sacrificed in the name of consolidating his own hold over the party and government had much to offer at this juncture. There is something called soft-power, which, sometimes, those who play bouncy realpolitik tend to ignore.