All's well that ends well. But President K.R. Narayanan will have to wait for a few more days to know whether the BJP-led government he has sworn in is stable. Ever since the Election Commission formally informed him about the constitution of the 12th Lok Sabha, his overriding consideration had been to instal a stable government.In view of the political instability that the country witnessed since the 1996 elections, his motive could hardly be questioned. By any yardstick, it was a noble presidential objective. The point, however, is whether the stability factor should have got precedence over all the other political and constitutional considerations.
Whether one realises it or not, the way Narayanan handled the situation that emerged in the wake of the fractured verdict was distinctively his own. He had little use for the precedents set by his predecessors, Shankar Dayal Sharma and R. Venkataraman. In doing so, he has set a new precedent. It saw a proactive President laying greater emphasis on stabilitythan was warranted. Of course, this happened because the Constitution is silent on what exactly should guide the President in extending an invitation to a party to form the government when no party enjoys a clear majority.
As the BJP was the single largest party and headed the largest pre-poll alliance, it should have been straightaway asked to form a government with the rider that it should prove its majority within a stipulated time. This would have been entirely valid, as no other party or combination of parties had staked its claim to form a government. Instead, Narayanan insisted on the BJP providing proof of the requisite parliamentary support to provide a stable government. An immediate fallout of the President's insistence was AIADMK leader Jayalalitha's realisation that the letter of her party's support could be used to extract her pound of flesh from the BJP. Surely, the President could not have envisaged a situation where his concern for stability only made Vajpayee more unstable.
It can beargued that Sharma's invitation to Vajpayee to form a government in 1996 was flawed as the government lasted only 13 days. It is forgotten that the President had no other alternative as the Congress' decision to support the United Front to form a government had not been communicated to him in time.
The ignominy the BJP suffered because of its failure to win the vote of confidence in 1996 will be a deterrent for any party faced with a similar situation in future. What compounded the BJP's failure at that time was the President's own failure to insist on a condition that the government should function more or less as a caretaker government till it proved its majority. Had he made it clear that the Presidential address to the joint session of Parliament would be made only after the government had proved its majority, the embarrassment Sharma faced on this count could have been avoided.
It is innovations of this kind that are required to meet situations like a hung Parliament. After all, there is noConstitutional provision under which the President can ask Vajpayee to prove his majority within 10 days. The rider follows from a rightful interpretation of the prerogatives of the President. Similarly, the word `stable' does not figure anywhere in the Constitution. Then why did Narayanan hesitate in inviting Vajpayee?
Maybe the party which gets an invitation will have an advantage over others in proving its majority support. But then, in a parliamentary democracy, a party or a coalition of parties which emerged with the largest number of seats is in any case entitled to such an advantage. In the recent elections, since no pre-poll alliance secured a majority, a government was possible only through a post-poll tie-up. Therefore the heavens would not have fallen if the BJP had secured that initial advantage. It is a different matter that ultimately it got that advantage.
But Narayanan thought otherwise as he wanted documentary proof of support. Assuming that Jayalalitha had not given her that much-delayedletter and a possible post-poll Congress-UF tie-up had failed to cross the magical number of 272, would the President have dissolved the House even before it met as had happened in his home state in 1965? A better comparison would be with the UP Assembly and the then Governor Romesh Bhandari's refusal to allow the single largest party to form a government. What came of it ultimately is too well known to merit recapitulation. The infamous Jagdambika Pal Ministry was sworn in on the basis of written proof of support but it could not last more than a few hours. Whatever the Allahabad High Court's decision, Pal had a fair chance to stay if only the written support was translated into reality when the House met for a trial of strength between Kalyan Singh and Pal.
Despite the UP experience, the President went out of his way by sending fax messages as far away as Chennai and Hyderabad in his anxiety to swear in only a stable government. Little does he realise that a politician like Jayalalitha, who is capable ofannouncing something in the morning and reversing it in the afternoon, can hardly be depended upon to abide by written undertakings. Now that Vajpayee is in the saddle, is there any guarantee that his supporting parties will stay put with the BJP?
Subramanian Swamy of the Janata Party, who flaunted the letter of support he gave to the President, is already on record saying that he will exercise a conscience vote if certain conditions put forward by him are not fulfilled. In a coalition of disparate parties, such eventualities cannot be ruled out. In any case, the President has no control over such a turn of events. They should rather be treated as the quirks of democracy.
But Sharma did not think so. When he realised that the written commitment the Congress gave to support the UF Government led by H.D. Deve Gowda did not prevent Sitaram Kesri from making a surprise visit to Rashtrapati Bhavan announcing withdrawal of support and staking a claim to form an alternative government, he insisted on theformation of a coordination committee to ward off any threat to the succeeding Gujral Government. As it happened, neither the Congress nor the UF paid any regard to the Presidential initiative as they went their separate ways. If anything, it signified the limitations of the President. The bunch of letters Narayanan has in his custody will not guarantee the Vajpayee government's stability. It will last as long as the MPs want it to last, no matter what the letters contain.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
