Maintaining that elections were not merely periodic events but a mechanism through which political authority is constituted, Justice BV Nagarathna of the Supreme Court on Saturday said institutions such as the Election Commission must function independently if constitutional governance was to remain intact.Delivering the Rajendra Prasad Memorial Lecture on ‘Constitutionalism Beyond Rights: Why Structure Matters’, at Chanakya Law University in Patna, Justice Nagarathna said, “It is of utmost importance that these institutions function independently and not to be influenced by political processes.””Our constitutional democracy has amply demonstrated smooth changes in government due to elections being held on a timely basis. Control over that process is, in effect, control over the conditions of political competition itself,” Justice Nagarathna said.She said the EC, Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and the Finance Commission shared common design logic that they were insulated, specialised and assigned the task of overseeing domains where the ordinary political process might be insufficient to ensure neutrality.Asserting that the separation of powers was a “constitutional arrangement of co-equals,” Justice Nagarathna urged the Centre to view states as “coordinates and not subordinates”. She called for keeping aside “inter-party differences” in the matter of “Centre-state relations”.Governance must not depend on “which party may be ruling the Centre and which other party may be ruling at the state level”, she said at the function also attended by Supreme Court judge Ahsanuddin Amanullah, the university’s Chancellor and Patna High Court Chief Justice Sangam Kumar Sahoo and Vice Chancellor Faizan Mustafa among others.Justice Nagarathna, who is in line to become the first woman Chief Justice of India next year, said “preservation of the Constitution cannot be seen as the task of defending rights at moments of crisis,” but that it “lies equally in the routine functioning of institutions”.Federalism was “not only about autonomy” but also “distinct centres of power, each capable of acting as a counterweight to the others. It ensures that governance is not a matter of unilateral command, but of negotiation and coordination,” she said.”Therefore, the need of the hour is to have greater coordination between the Union and state governments. The state governments are not subordinate to the Union Government except as stipulated under the Constitution, and, therefore, must be accorded the treatment that is due to them irrespective of the political parties that may be in power,” Justice Nagarathna said.”Inter-party differences or distinct political ideologies have to be kept aside in the matter of Centre-state relations as the latter is in the realm of constitutional governance which would not depend on which party may be ruling at the Centre and which other party may be ruling at the state level,” she added. (With PTI inputs)