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Wanted: a neutral umpire
CP Bhambhri on how a partisan President could spell doom for regional formations
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Photo: Shailendra Pandey |
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THE FORTHCOMING elections for the highest constitutional office of the President of India has assumed great political significance because the new occupant of Rashtrapati Bhawan in 2012 is expected to play a crucial and active role in the process of government formation at the Centre in 2014. It does not require a political magician to predict that the next general election, like all others since 1989, will bring a fractured electoral verdict. All-India national parties and state-based regional political groups and leaders will have to make great political efforts to form a coalition government at the Centre.
Indian voters will have to make their ‘choice’ from among about 45 recognised parties which are contesting for elections from their regions or sub-regions, or those parties which are described as all-India national parties. Such a diverse political map of India, where about 45 contenders for electoral victory are in competition against one another, has created a situation where no single party or group can win a majority of seats on its own. Hence, the role of President becomes crucial in determining and deciding the formation of a viable ‘coalition government’ at the Centre.
The President becomes the arbiter and neutral umpire and referee when the task of formation of central government becomes quite complex, because different parties or their combinations come forward to put their claim for the formation of government on the basis of a ‘manufactured’ majority of supporting parties and groups. The President has to evaluate the claims made by different coalitions of parties and find out methods to determine that their claim of a ‘majority support’ is not phoney. The ball is in the court of the Rashtrapati because, like Caesar’s wife, he should be completely above suspicion when inviting a leader chosen by the coalition groups for forming a government.
This is the reason that an opinion has been expressed by a political leader that the office of President should be occupied by an ‘apolitical’ person who can be trusted by every group for his ‘non-partisan’ role while dealing with the claims of different groups that they have majority support behind them. The only objective criteria which is followed by the President at the time of formation of government is that the claim of majority support by group of coalition parties should not be ‘spurious’ and a viable an stable government should be constituted on the basis of majority support only.
The formation of coalition government at the Centre consisting of 22 parties and groups or 16 parties and groups — which has been the case in the past — should not lead to controversies about the President’s neutrality. Otherwise, as head of government and sole symbol of the whole nation, he will lose his moral authority before the political public. Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, and a major player in the 2014 politics of government formation at the Centre, has openly rejected the idea of an ‘apolitical’ candidate for the forthcoming contest for President’s office, and has publicly opted for a ‘political’ person for Rashtrapati Bhawan.
The process of consultation among the political stakeholders has begun and on 30 April, Sushma Swaraj of the BJP opposed the proposed candidature of Hamid Ansari, the present Vice-President of India, because she thought Ansari did not have the ‘stature’ to occupy the highest office of the country. Sushma of the BJP was castigated for her remark against Ansari. The JD(U), Samajwadi Party and CPI(M) distanced themselves from her remarks. On 1 May, Sharad Yadav, NDA convener, observed, ‘There has been no discussion with us yet on this issue. The NDA has not yet decided its candidate.”
The BJP has been completely silenced because it has been politically isolated from its NDA allies and other important political players in the game of identifying a candidate. It is the concern of every political group ‘a trustworthy’ impartial kind of person should be the President in 2014. There is a lurking suspicion along all major political groups that the Congress party may not push a controversial Congress party leader for the office of the President. The explanation for the ongoing process of parleys and kite-flying arises from expectations of ‘fractured and completely fragmented’ verdict.
THE ELECTION of the President this year has assumed great significance because the President, whosoever he may be, would be expected to exercise his ‘judgement’ about the formation of a post-election 2014 coalition government. There is another important explanation for the hotly contested office of the President in 2012. Many political groups are haunted by the proclamation of Emergency by Indira Gandhi in June 1975, where President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was woken at midnight and blindly signed the proclamation that suspended all freedoms and fundamental rights.
It is not only this: many duly elected Chief Ministers of state governments during the last 63 years have been dismissed by an obliging and partisan President on the advice of the ruling party at the Centre on the basis of a spurious and disingenuous report of the state Governor, a ruling party nominee, that the constitutional machinery in the state has broken down. This memory haunts political leaders in spite of the fact that the letter and spirit of the Indian Constitution and judicial decisions of the Supreme Court have authoritatively laid down that the President is a constitutional head of a parliamentary system and he has no ‘discretionary’ powers of his own. It is felt that the Constitution can be twisted and tilted by the President in spite of the fact that he is a ‘nominal’ head of state. The Janata Party, which came to power in 1977 after defeating the Indira Gandhi Emergency regime, moved on 30 April 1979 the 44th Constitutional Amendment Act, which substantially changed the situation and curbed the arbitrary powers of any President in the future. Even Article 356, which was abused while dealing with state governments, was amended to ensure that the proclamation should be approved by both the Houses and if suspension of the Assembly at the state level is extended beyond six months, again Parliament should discuss and approve it.
Sea changes have occurred in the political situation in 2012 and it is difficult, even impossible, to proclaim for the whole country or in a particular state because coalition governments at the Centre have their built-in ‘checks and balances’ because so many groups share power at the Centre. It should not make the country complacent because the BJP and the Sangh Parivar are ideologically committed to the system of highly centralised Presidentialism for the country.
CP Bhambhri is former dean of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
cpbhambhri@mail.jnu.ac.in
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