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Unit 11: India Independent to 1964

of the electoral process, (e) the rooting of democracy, (f) the setting in place of an administrative Notes
structure, (g) the development of science and technology, and (h) the beginnings of the welfare
state.

11.1 A Parliamentary, Secular and Democratic Republic

The President
The executive power is vested by the constitution in the President of India but in the words of
Ambedkar, he is a constitutional head who ‘occupies the same position as the King under the
English Constitution. He is the head of the State but not of the Executive. He represents the nation
but does not rule the nation.’ The head of the executive is in fact the prime minister at the head of
the council of ministers which is responsible to parliament. India’s parliamentary form of
government bears the closest resemblance to the British system, with the difference of course that
India has no hereditary monarchy but an elected President as its symbolic head of state. The
alternative of a Presidential form of government of the American type was rejected by the framers
of the constitution as unsuited to Indian conditions.
The Indian constitution thus formally confers an enormous range of powers on the President, but
these are to be exercised in accordance with the advice of the cabinet. But the President is by no
means a figurehead and the political situation may provide many occasions for an activist President.
This tension between his formal and real powers has been visible from the time of the first
President, Dr Rajendra Prasad. Having serious reservations about the Hindu Code Bill, he tried to
argue in September 1951 that the President had a greater role to play. Nehru promptly sought the
opinion of Alladi Krishnaswamy Ayyar, the constitutional expert, in Madras and M.C. Setalvad,
the Attorney-General. Fortunately for Indian democracy, both the experts were categorical that
acceptance of President Rajendra Prasad’s arguments would upset the whole constitutional structure
and could lead to the President assuming dictatorial powers. Rajendra Prasad was thus persuaded
to exercise a more limited role in keeping with his own earlier hope expressed in the Constituent
Assembly debates that ‘the convention under which in England the King acts always on the advice
of his Ministers will be established in this country also and the President ... will become a
constitutional President in all matters’.
The danger of a President actually using his powers is least likely when a single party commands
a clear majority. But the potential for presidential activism occurs in the event of fractured electoral
verdicts or splits in the ruling party, leading to unstable coalition governments. The first time this
happened was in 1979 when the Janata government led by Morarji Desai fell because of a split in
the ruling party. The President, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, used his discretion in refusing Morarji
Desai’s request to form a new government, asking Charan Singh to prove his majority by seeking
a vote of confidence by a fixed date and consulting other party leaders before accepting the new
prime minister, Charan Singh’s advice to dissolve the Lok Sabha. President Venkataraman acted
in a similar fashion when he invited Chandra Shekhar to form the government after the resignation
of V.P. Singh in November 1990. He took a whole week to accept Chandra Shekhar’s advice to
dissolve the Lok Sabha in March 1991 and even played around with the idea of a National
Government with himself at its head.
In recent years, these worries about the President’s role have intensified because of the fact that
the last time any party secured a clear majority in the national elections was in 1984-85 when Rajiv
Gandhi came to power after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The elections of 1989, 1991, 1996 and
1998 all created ample opportunities and need for presidential intervention. For example, in March
1998, after the election results showed that when the BJP staked its claim to form the government
on the ground that it was the single largest party and had enough support from other parties to
win the confidence vote in the Lok Sabha, President K.R. Narayanan insisted that Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, the leader of the BJP, furnish proof in writing that his party did indeed enjoy the
support of its allies. This resulted in an embarrassing wait of a few days for the prospective prime
minister because one of his critical allies, J. Jayalalithaa of the AIADMK (whose desertion finally
led to the collapse of the BJP government in April 1999) had many ‘second thoughts’ and drove

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