Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0168/01688.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 28KB | 457 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01688}
$Pretitle{221}
$Title{India
Chapter 8B.   The Union Government}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Donald M. Seekins}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{court
president
supreme
sabha
high
parliament
state
courts
government
lok}
$Date{1985}
$Log{}
Country:     India
Book:        India, A Country Study
Author:      Donald M. Seekins
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1985

Chapter 8B.   The Union Government

     The union government is divided into three distinct, but not entirely
separate, branches: the executive, legislative, and judicial. The executive
leadership is drawn from and is responsible to the legislative body. The
Constitution provides for a judiciary that is free from executive or
legislative interference in its deliberations (see fig. 16).

The Executive

     The executive branch is formally headed by the president, who is aided
and advised by the Council of Ministers. Although the president is head of
state and supreme commander of the armed forces and, technically, is vested
with a great range of powers, the prime minister has been the de facto head of
the union executive. Dr. Ambedkar compared the presidency to the British
monarch, representing but not ruling the nation. The presidential office is
one of great ceremony and prestige, and the drafters envisioned it as playing
an important symbolic role in upholding constitutional rule. The oath of
office binds the individual to "preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution."

     The president is elected for a five-year term by an electoral college
consisting of the elected members of both houses of Parliament and of the
legislative assemblies in the states. The participation of the state
assemblies in the election is designed to ensure that the president is the
chosen head of the nation and not merely of the majority party in Parliament,
thereby placing the office above politics and endowing the incumbent with an
aura of national unity.

     On paper, the president's powers are formidable. The president appoints
the prime minister and other members of the Council of Ministers on the advice
of the prime minister; he (or she) also appoints the attorney general, the
governors of the states, the chief justice and the justices of the Supreme
Court and those of the high courts, and ambassadors and other diplomatic
representatives of India. Article 123 of the Constitution empowers the
president to issue ordinances when Parliament is not in session; the
ordinances have the force of acts of Parliament but must be considered by
the legislature after it has assembled. The president also has the power to
summon and prorogue Parliament and can dissolve the Lok Sabha. He or she can
impose President's Rule in a state if he or she is convinced that the state
government cannot maintain order.

     The first president, Rajendra Prasad (1950-62), set a precedent by
limiting his role to that of nominal and ceremonial head of state. His
successors have not sought to exercise their powers on their own. After
Gandhi's candidate, V.V. Giri, won the 1969 presidential election over an
official Congress candidate, she was able to use the office as a largely
pliable instrument to maintain her position of power. She prevailed on
President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, a Muslim from Assam with little power or
prestige of his own, to issue the proclamation of Emergency on June 25, 1975.
However, during 1979, the last year of the tumultuous Janata government,
President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy acted on his own to form a new government from
opposition parties after the Janata prime minister resigned; when the new
government collapsed, he called for general elections. Reddy's atypical
initiatives suggest that, given the enormous powers of the presidency, a
powerful president and a pliable or divided Parliament could markedly alter
the nature of government. In the event of the president's death, the vice
president assumes office until a new president is chosen, which must take
place within six months.

     The Council of Ministers is made up of three classes of officials: a
varying number of cabinet ministers (20 in mid-1984), non-cabinet ministers,
and deputy ministers. The cabinet forms an inner circle within the Council of
Ministers. It is formally the highest policymaking body and the supreme organ
of coordination in the government. Formed by the prime minister, it
automatically dissolves upon his or her resignation. It is composed of senior
ministers, who are selected by the prime minister on the basis of the relative
importance of their respective portfolios and their political and
administrative skill and experience. During the closing years of Gandhi's
rule, however, cabinet ministers tended to be chosen on the criterion of
loyalty to her rather than competence. Other tendencies that diminished the
role of the cabinet in the political process included her preference for
seeking guidance from a small circle of personal advisers rather than
ministers, frequent reshuffling of cabinet posts, and her practice of
bypassing ministers and dealing directly with senior bureaucrats, particularly
after 1980.

The Legislature

     Parliament consists of the president and the two houses, the Lok Sabha
and the Rajya Sabha (Council of States). The Constitution's inclusion of the
president as a part of Parliament was meant to stress the interdependence
rather than the independence of the executive and legislative branches.
Parliament's principal function is the passing of laws on those matters the
Constitution specifies to be within its domain in the federal structure. Among
its constitutional powers are the fixing or changing of state boundaries,
major responsibility for amending the Constitution, control of the nation's
finances, and the removal of the cabinet by a vote of no confidence.

     Parliament functions in principle as a debating and deliberating body.
Each daily session of the Lok Sabha begins with a question period; the Rajya
Sabha holds question periods four days a week. The political opposition
typically has been outspoken in its criticism of the ruling party, but given
the solid majority of Congress (I) in both houses in the mid-1980s, the
opposition has had minimal influence on the legislative process. Legislation
was commonly presented to Parliament by Gandhi's government and
rubber-stamped by loyal party members, sparking shouting matches and frequent
walkouts by a frustrated opposition. Observers noted with some anxiety the
increasing irrelevance of Parliament. A practice of growing frequency in the
mid-1980s was the use of Article 123. While Parliament was not in session, the
president, Giani Zail Singh, a Gandhi loyalist, proclaimed ordinances that the
Congress (I) majority later approved.

     The Lok Sabha. The Lok Sabha consists of 542 members elected on the basis
of universal adult suffrage in the states and union territories plus two
additional members named by the president from the Anglo-Indian community. The
usual Lok Sabha term is five years; it may be dissolved by the president
before the end of the term and new elections held (a maximum of six months
after the dissolution). In an emergency its length may be extended for a
maximum of one year at a time and for not longer than six months after the
termination of the state of emergency. This occurred in 1976 when the general
election was delayed beyond its five-year term under Emergency rule provisions
enacted in June of the previous year, though elections were held in March
1977. The Constitution stipulates that it meet at least twice a year
(customarily, it meets three times annually) and have no more than six months
between sessions. Lok Sabha members must be at least 25 years of age.

     For the basis of Lok Sabha representation, the states and union
territories are divided into single-member constituencies. The allocation of
seats to each state or union territory is determined on the basis of
population in proportion to the total population of the