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Task of government formation

There is a near certainty that the 15th general election will produce a hung parliament, which by itself has not been an uncommon occurrence in the last two decades. Yet this time round, given the likely outcome and the publicly declared stands of the various parties, government formation may turn out to be extremely complex, turning the focus on the role of the President. This is one of the few occasions when, by the very nature of the function, the head of state would not be required to act on the advice of the Council of Ministers but would have to exercise her discretion. This discretion of course is not unbounded as any government sworn in cannot survive without the majority support in the Lok Sabha. Indeed, the one criterion the Constitution prescribes for the Council of Ministers is in Article 75 (3): “The Council of Ministers shall be collectively responsible to the House of the People.” Yet, in a situation where alliances and groupings are extremely tenuous, the party or the front called upon to form the government first would gain a certain advantage — which may or may not endure — with fence sitters gravitating towards it. How precisely and in what order the President invites a party or alliance to explore the possibility of forming the government assumes critical importance.

The practice of appointing the Prime Minister in a hung parliament has varied widely both in the United Kingdom and in India and there are no firmly established conventions. It is perhaps easier to identify what ought not to be done in such a situation. One is to mechanically invite the single largest party to form the government without verifying its support and leaving it to parliament to test its strength. This is the rule advocated by President R. Venkataraman in 1989, when no party or alliance obtained a majority in the elections. With the largest party, the Congress declining to form the government, he invited the second largest party/group headed by V.P. Singh. As he notes in his book, My Presidential Years, he made it clear that at that stage he was not interested in looking at the quantum of support and it was for the new government to demonstrate its majority in the Lok Sabha through a motion of confidence in 21 to 30 days. This process eliminates presidential discretion altogether, but its success depends on the good sense of the single largest party not to form the government if it was not confident of majority support. Its mechanical application in 1996 by his successor, Shankar Dayal Sharma, resulted in the swearing in of the Bharatiya Janata Party government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which lasted just 13 days. It was perhaps this short-lived tenure that President K.R. Narayanan had in mind when, in 1998, he sought to satisfy himself of the majority support for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance by seeking letters of support from all the parties before swearing in Mr. Vajpayee. In a rare speaking decision, he noted that the BJP as the single largest party and the BJP-led combination as the largest pre-poll formation had the support of 264 members, which in the context of the neutrality of the Telugu Desam’s 12 members did cross the half-way mark. After appointing Mr. Vajpayee as Prime Minister, the President asked him to secure a vote of confidence within 10 days.

There is much to be said for the step-by-step process of obtaining the views of various political parties, the verification of claims of support, and the requirement of demonstrating majority support on the floor of parliament followed by Mr. Narayanan, though it may not provide the answer in all situations. Certain principles that ought to govern the President’s action, however, are clear. First, the overriding consideration should be majority support in the Lok Sabha, first proved to the satisfaction of the President and then demonstrated to the country at large through a vote of confidence. The Sarkaria Commission suggested the following order of preference for the appointment of Chief Ministers in a hung legislature – pre-poll alliance, largest single party, post-election coalition with all parties participating in government, and post-election coalition with outside support. This was intended as a check on Governors abusing the power of appointing Chief Ministers but it is too mechanical and, in any case, is not of much relevance in the current context of the President’s functions. Secondly, making the mandate meaningful calls for priority for pre-poll alliances of parties that sought the people’s support together with a common programme. There is of course no guarantee and no way of ensuring that one party or another will not hop from one front to another after the election, as the Telangana Rashtra Samiti has done. Thirdly, when the mandate is fractured, both the President and the various parties should try hard to form a government out of the 15th Lok Sabha with enough time for negotiations for the parties to come to some arrangement. One would hope that the leaders of parties would work out an agreement on common programmes rather than merely come to some arrangement for sharing power.

If one alliance or another is immediately able to secure the support of other parties outside the alliance to make up the majority, the President’s task will be made that much easier. All she has to do then is to satisfy herself of the majority claim through seeking letters of support, swear in the government, and require it to secure a vote of confidence within a reasonable period. Only if no viable arrangement emerges or if there are rival claims does the head of state need to call the largest pre-poll alliance to attempt government formation with the support of other parties, going through the process of obtaining letters of support and requiring a floor test. One can expect President Pratibha Patil to go about the task of government formation in the highest traditions of the presidency with the object of bringing a viable government into office in tune with the mandate, giving every party its due. This newspaper hopes that the political parties and leaders will remain true to the principles of fair play and not act in ways that fuel public cynicism over their quest for power.

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