President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

New Delhi - The governors of four states –– Goa, Gujarat, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh –– were dismissed on July 2 in the first major showdown between the Congress Party-led coalition government and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam ordered the dismissal of Kedar Nath Sahni (Goa), Kailashpati Mishra (Gujarat), Parmanand (Haryana, who uses only one name) and Vishnu Kant Shastri (Uttar Pradesh) after considering pleas from both the government and the opposition.

“The president has ordered that the four governors be dismissed with immediate effect,” Rashtrapati Bhavan spokesman S.M. Khan said.

The four governors dismissed, as also Madan Lal Khurana, former BJP leader who is governor of Rajasthan, had been under immense pressure to resign ever since the BJP-led coalition lost the general election and the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power at the Center.

“The order does not have anything on Khurana,” Khan said.

Responding to the dismissal order, which comes on the eve of Parliament’s budget session from July 5, a stung BJP said it would protest the move aggressively but revealed no immediate plans on the form of protest.

“This is against the spirit of the Constitution,” said former law minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley. “There has to be a compelling reason to remove a governor –– not only that he belongs to a certain party or ideology.”

The Congress Party, however, justified the move. “Governors are supposed to act as a bridge between the Center and the states. Whenever there is a regime change at the Center, governors also change,” Congress spokesman Anand Sharma said. “There is