A fractured mandate might make things tricky for Prez Patil

Rashtrapati Bhawan sources said the President has been having in-house discussions but was yet to call in Constitution experts without the results in hand.

As exit polls have predicted a tight race with a slight edge for the UPA but none of the formations getting a clear majority,legal experts feel she should exercise her power in way that which ever combination she invites should be able to provide stable government.

Experts Shanti Bhushan,Rajiv Dhawan and P P Rao were of the opinion that it is stability and not the numbers in the coalition which should be a factor to be considered by the President.

Bhushan,a former Law Minister,said there are no prescribed rules for inviting political parties and the President can invite a party or an alliance to form a government. There are various criteria on which a leader can be invited to head the government.

Bhushan said “the President can invite either the single largest party of the largest pre-poll alliance or the largest post-poll alliance to form the government. She can even invite a smaller alliance if she is convinced that it would be able to prove majority in the house. Agreeing that President has a crucial role when there is a fractured verdict,Dhavan said she has to bring balance between political party’s arithmetic games and people’s aspirations for a stable government.”

“The President is also under moral obligation to ensure that political parties do not indulge in suitcase trading to prove majority as the anti-defection law is not applicable to parties who desert pre-poll alliance,” he said.

Rao said there is no golden rule that the largest party or largest alliance must be invited to form the government.

“We know what happened when the former President Shankar Dayal Sharma invited the largest party BJP to form the government in 1997. So the President should decide on the basis of number that a particular party or alliance has but on the basis of which is better positioned to form stable government,” Rao said.

Patil has a number of precedents to go by in taking her decision.

In 1989,President R Venkataraman went by the principle of calling the largest party to form by inviting Rajiv Gandhi,the Congress leader,to form the government which he declined.

Then BJP,the second largest party was invited,but it also declined leading to the formation of a government under V P Singh which was supported from outside by the Left and BJP.

It was another matter that Gandhi’s refusal was preceded by backroom discussions in which the party was advised against staking claim because of its defeat in the elections.

Again in 1991,Venkataraman invited P V Narasimha Rao to form the government as leader of the single largest party with Congress bagging over 200 seats though it did not have majority.

But 1996 proved to be different when Shanker Dayal Sharma invited Atal Bihari Vajpayee as leader of the largest party to form the government which fell in 13 days because others came together post-poll to defeat the BJP government on the floor of the House.

To avoid any such situation,K R Narayanan insisted on letters of support from parties before inviting Vajpayee to form the government and asked to prove the majority in the

House.

In 1999,Narayanan did not have any problems in inviting Vajpayee again because of clear majority for the BJP-led coalition.

Likewise,there was no problem again for him in inviting Manmohan Singh to form the government in 2004 though the Congress-led coalition got the backing of Left parties only after the elections to gain the magic figure of 272.